325 Search results for "re entry"

by Kui Mwai Full bodied, multilayered, complex Black mother-daughter relationships are rarely captured on screen. It wasn’t until I watched Stella Meghie’s “The Photograph” that I realized just how much I was craving to see something akin to my mother and I’s relationship on film.  “The Photograph” invites its viewers into characters Mae (Issa Rae) […]

by Donnie Moreland  This essay contains spoilers for Patrick Chamoiseau’s 1997 novel, Slave Old Man The final words of Patrick Chamoiseau’s Slave Old Man read, “Brother, I shouldn’t have, but I touched those bones.” Those bones being, “The clavicles. Some vertebrae. A few formless bits. Porous things. And a broken tibia…” Those bones, as are […]

by Hess Love belly of boat dissolves you, precipitates you into nonword from which you cry out, generates clamor of your protests, boat is your womb, a matrix, yet it expels you- Edouard Glissant I always wanted to be a mother. I wanted motherhood’s playfulness, its duty, its imagination and selflessness. Like most people that […]

          by Rann In The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander, she states, “The fate of millions of people—indeed the future of the Black community itself—may depend on the willingness of those who care about racial justice to re-examine their basic assumptions about the […]

I was not with my grandma, Audrie Jean Lowe at the onset of her stroke. But my uncle remembers it as if it were yesterday.  When she started to feel sick, she walked into the house, immediately going to the edge of her bed to kneel down and pray. She held her hands up and […]

by Donnie Moreland Most folk respond to the words, “I have a Master’s degree in film studies” with either, “What can you do with that?” or the more biting, “What’s the point of that?” Funny thing is that for much of my program, I asked the same questions. It’s when films such as Queen and […]

by Cosima Smith  Television, movies, and literary representations all serve to enforce, perpetuate, and reinforce the lived-realities of their subjects and audience. They also proliferate the ideas of their creators by portraying a set of characters who, ideally, undergo hardships and growth, experience love and loss, and who (work to) internalize a great deal of […]

By J.R. Yussuf Today marks the 31st anniversary of National Coming Out Day, a day dedicated to raising awareness of civil rights for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. A main goal of this celebration is to help create an environment where living openly and honestly is possible. But while coming out can be incredibly validating, a […]

by Jamara Wakefield  Let’s keep it real, there are few radical resources available for Black students when experiencing oppression on campus. It manifests in a variety of forms: from explicit aggression to microaggressions to institutional policies to interactions that feel “off” but aren’t easily quantifiable, in part because the campus environment justifies these actions.  The […]

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 […]

By Stanley Fritz Last week, rap legend and newly minted billionaire Jay-Z showed us the limits and flaws of “Black capitalism” when he signed a deal with the NFL. This is, of course, the same league that has gone out of its way to block Colin Kaepernick from playing because he kneeled during the national […]

by Andrew Keahey Comedy is not an easy gig. Your career is forged in the fire of public opinion in clubs full of drunk people who will eat you alive if you show one iota of fear or doubt. Maybe you carry around a little notebook where you write down disconnected ideas that exist nebulously […]