754 Search results for "light up life"

by Ajeé Buggam If 2020 didn’t teach us anything, it taught us the importance of our mental health and how fragile it truly is if we don’t tend to it. Oftentimes in Black homes, checking in regarding each other’s mental health is not a common conversation we inquire about. The unfortunate truth is Black people […]

by Diane Wong Since the start of the pandemic, there has been an alarming increase and series of violent hate crimes against Asian Americans. In the last two months alone, Pak Ho a 75 year old Chinese American was killed in Oakland Chinatown, Vicha Ratanapakdee a 84 year old Thai man was violently shoved to […]

By Donnie Moreland It must’ve been 2015 when I first viewed Debbie Tucker Green’s Second Coming (2014). It’s a film which asks the question, what if the nativity story took place between two working class Black folks already raising a little boy in South London.  It’s a mesmerizing dreamscape of rage and longing, orbited by […]

by Gloria Oladipo Black joy is revolutionary. Full stop. Oftentimes, white people misinterpret Black liberation movements as movements only about pain, movements only about anger, only about violence and death. And, of course, they involve those things. But joy is foundational. Joy is fundamental. Joy is what we’re fighting for. Joy is what we’re fighting […]

By Donnie Moreland You always toss the white bass back into these waters. They had it hard enough than to be wrestling in somebody’s hands for air, for too long. When one catches on the line, you pull it up and toss it back. Most of the time, you just let it have the lure […]

By Donnie Moreland It was no later than 6:23 am, on September 19th, when Officer Jacob Dochavney discovered the two bodies in the Tacoma River. He waited to call it in. He was three days from his two week vacation he’d been hollering about since February. He was supposed to be going to Las Vegas […]

CW: Mention of child loss Everything is a cult. All flesh is bound to shift. Religion is a cloak, pockmarked with heartache, torture, and selfishness. These are the facts of my world, its edges stacked on top of each other and topped with salty syrup. Life is an ever revolving door of orange desert sand […]

by Vernon  Jordan, III She sat in the back of the joint, eyeing him. From over the shoulder of his bass, he noticed her fingers around the rim of a glass, miming the bass notes. He was the player, but so was she. Rooted, was their first glance, she minded him the way trees mind […]

by Janyce Glasper Hannah Bledsoe loved Linda Crawford. Yet Hannah desperately needed a quiet, isolated place to paint alone. One simply could not crash on a college friend’s couch forever. She found salvation in the good neighborhood— a drafty basement converted into a studio apartment. The tightly jarred windows and cracked ceilings poorly congealed together […]

By Donnie Moreland Only on nights like this, could “sweet” be an adjective to describe the air. A prize, really. All those brothers, shoulder to shoulder on the Mall, and you can imagine how much funk can stew in a day. But a soft wind started everyone on their way back from where they began […]

By Jared Alexander Let me tell you, chatting with HAILES will immediately put a smile on your face and set you at ease. Her entire vibe is welcoming, warm and chill, even in a Zoom call while she sets up in a recording studio in Bedstuy. Although she dropped her amazing debut single Come Thru […]

by Donnie Moreland “Art museums are nothing more than haunted houses.” In Demetrius’s head, the words spun like a tired wheel, as he walked the corners of the room. Like a drum, Marcus’s voice bounced as though he were still alive. “Art museums are nothing more than haunted houses. All museums are, really. But there […]