I’m starting to think I might have the Crazy Miss Martha Syndrome. Miss Martha lived alone. She was the quiet, old (at least from my seven-year-old perspective) across-the-street neighbor whom I often saw sweeping her front porch or putzing around in her front yard flower garden. Actually, she was quiet until around noon every Saturday when […]
How Much Meanness Makes US Great? Read More »
Some truths are larger than facts. Perhaps that is what draws me to the Nativity stories this time of year. Having grown up with my mother, a Sunday school teacher, and a bona fide “church lady”, I have been immersed in the stories since early childhood. Back then, the arrival of the white-skinned Christ child,
Who Gets Invited into the Nativity Story? Read More »
Sticks and stones may break my bones But words will never hurt me. There’s power in little ditties such as these. They have such cultural currency that we typically don’t stop to wonder whether or not they’re true. In fact, we may not even notice if they’re linguistically nonsensical or patently insulting. The pot should
Sticks and Stones and Words as Weapons Read More »
The last time I worried about vampires was when I was about eleven years old. Of all of the shape-shifting monsters, vampires were the scariest because they could creep in through the creaks and crevices of your house as a barely discernible mist. They could also be deceptively charming and beautiful before they sucked the
Not All Vampires Live in Transylvania or Texas or . . . Read More »
Two Black women walked through a door. If that sentence sounds like a setup, it is. But it’s not a setup for a joke, nor is it the beginning of a “once upon a time” fable. It’s the prologue to the vicious and toxic reality of right now. Claudine Gay, the former president of Harvard University, walked
Two Black Women Walk Through a Door Read More »
About 40 years ago, I had an intense conversation with a man whose name I don’t remember, so I will just call him Paul. Both of us were nearing completion of our graduate coursework in psychology, and we met while interviewing for a clinical internship at a south Florida university. Following those interviews, Paul announced
America, America, How Does Your Wisdom Grow? Read More »
One of the many gifts I received from my mother is a healthy skepticism about religiosity. Although she was a deeply devout, churchgoing, Bible-loving, Sunday School teacher, she was intensely suspicious of anything that felt like performative spirituality. I remember a neighbor who would routinely greet her with “Praise the Lord!” – instead of a
“Biblelistically” Blessed: Liberating Christianity from White Supremacy Read More »
Nothing has as much durability as a racialized trope. Memories of 60’s television include racing downstairs with my cousins to see the “Negro” who had been spotted in a soap commercial. Believe me, it was a race-worthy event (pun fully intended). At that time, Black bodies were rarely represented in the media except in highly
Still Playing in the Dark? Read More »
There were some Southern traditions that my mother seemed to delight in ignoring. One was wearing roses on Mother’s Day: red if your mother was alive, white if she was deceased. I can almost imagine her wearing a dandelion in defiance of that tradition. It wasn’t that she had a fraught relationship with her mother;
Mary, Full of Grace, with a Little Splash of Vinegar Read More »
I know next to nothing about barnyards and stables. In fact, I just learned that a manger is a feeding trough for animals. Other barnyard images that come to my mind involve buzzing flies, odious smells, as well as animal excretions and emissions of various sorts. I am also pretty sure you have to watch
