1420 Search results for "life story"

Black men – we need to take the racist online harassment of Black women more seriously
by Donnie Moreland “I get harassment as a woman and I get the extra harassment because of race and being a black woman. They will call white women a ‘c*nt’ and they’ll call me a ‘n*gger c*nt’.” – Imani Gandy, Rewire.News “You’re a fucking fat ass nigger. Hang yourself bitch.” – Anonymous
The trans child in me still needs to feel wanted
by Jamila Dawn Mitchell I’m writing this because I need to feel wanted. That’s it. It may sound selfish to most. To a psychologist, though, this makes sense. Most things we do are done in spite of our desire to want to be loved. The sense of belonging is the essence of our humanity and […]
Poverty appropriation & the moral depravity of a society where elite education has the highest stakes
Editor’s Note: This month at BYP, we will be exploring Education & Schooling, and we are interested in publishing works that address these topics. What are the implications of charter and private schools in communities of color? How do we counteract anti-Black textbooks and teachers in our children’s education? How did you heal from bullying […]
We can’t ignore Marrianne Williamson’s fatphobia and ableism just because she supports reparations for slavery
Marianne Williamson makes me physically ill, and seeing people support her compounds my nausea. The Democratic candidate made waves last week when she delivered an impressive answer about reparations to Don Lemon post-debate: “[T]here were 250 years of slavery followed by another 100 years of domestic terrorism… given that there were 4 to 5 million […]
How my experience as a Black man working with children was tainted by racism
Editor’s Note: This month at BYP, we will be exploring Education & Schooling, and we are interested in publishing works that address these topics. What are the implications of charter and private schools in communities of color? How do we counteract anti-Black textbooks and teachers in our childrens’ education? How did you heal from bullying […]
The white writer’s misimagination of Black characters in science fiction
by Inigo Laguda This essay contains spoilers for Another Life (2019) and Annihilation (2018) For a writer, I read astonishingly little. I chalk my aversion up to over-inundating myself with books as a boy and filling all my curious voids with grand words and fantastical tales. It’s almost like I nauseatingly engorged myself on literature […]
Reclaiming memory as a Black father and son in the face of cultural and racial traumas
This essay contains discussions of racialized state violence and suicide attempts by Donnie Moreland I have difficulty recalling specific details of my childhood. Trauma has a way of coloring memory. Strangely, the events I sometimes beg to forget are the ones I can see with a clarity the remainder of my youth is never afforded. […]
Faced with commercialization, the Black Punk community turns to its past for a guide to keep resisting
By Monika Estrella Negra The majority of the Black punks I have talked to were drawn to (or got lost in) the Punk scene in order to escape the rigidity and heteronormative idealism of traditional Black political organizing. This is not to infer that all Black punks identify with far leftist views, nor does it […]
How heterosexual Black men project the psycho-sexual traumas of the plantation onto our queer brethren
This essay contains discussions of racialized sexual violence and mentions r/pe by Donnie Moreland There is this thing with us, as Black men. This war. Well, less war and more an inter-communal pogrom, wherein any Black man who shows no desire to lay with women exclusively is designated a cancer, subject to extermination. The prevention […]
It took a global pandemic, but the original spirit of Pride is finally being honored
CW: murder, antiBlack violence, transphobia When coronavirus started making its presence known in the U.S. by March of this year, it quickly became apparent that life as we knew it would have to make a major shift. One of those shifts is the postponement, if not cancellation, of various, large gatherings, including the traditional Pride […]
Broken From the Colony
This year, Fix—Grist’s solutions lab—put out a call for short stories for their first climate- fiction contest. The call was an invitation to look beyond this moment of climate devastation and dream up what the next 180 years of climate repair can be. Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors, sponsored by NRDC, drew more […]
The Cloud Weaver’s Song
This year, Fix—Grist’s solutions lab—put out a call for short stories for their first climate- fiction contest. The call was an invitation to look beyond this moment of climate devastation and dream up what the next 180 years of climate repair can be. Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors, sponsored by NRDC, drew more […]