195 Search results for "writers"

by James Mbuthia Ndung’u     The creator’s code: Input, persons Function, love Operating to create freedom, output. A farmer cultivating, and tending to their farm; reaping an infallible world order.   The human plant corrupts itself with fear of losing freedom that was never lost, a virus. It transforms some inputs into ‘bugs’- persons […]

Valentine’s Day is tomorrow and as usual it’s got me reflecting on how utterly diabolical consumerist culture is, how it influences and perpetuates our constant need to measure who is most worthy of love, affection and gifts. And why we think it is our business to begin with. It also has me deeply bitter about […]

“Culture today is infecting everything with sameness. Film, radio, and magazines form a system. Each branch of culture is unanimous within itself and all are unanimous together.” —”The Culture Industry: Enlightenment As Mass Deception”, Dialectic of Enlightenment Stephen King recently tweeted, “I would never consider diversity in matters of art. Only quality. It seems to […]

BYP is launching our featured writers’ program, called The Spotlight. These four writers will publish one piece per month for a year on topics of their choice. These writers have been hand-picked by us and we’re excited to welcome them onboard. Here are our current Featured Writers! Originally from San Francisco, Tongo Eisen-Martin is a poet, movement worker, and educator. His […]

by Andrew Keahey White supremacy doesn’t allow for Black anger. The second we get even mildly irritated in any way and make the mistake of actually showing it, we’re labeled as irrational, problematic, and even violent. You see it all the time. It’s one of the reasons twitchy white cops use to justify their brutality […]

This essay contains descriptions of racial violence and spoilers for Episode 6 of HBO’s Watchmen  by Donnie Moreland I don’t trust Damon Lindelhoff—the showrunner of HBO’s Watchmen. He’s a damn compelling writer, but he is one that often conflates philosophical inquiry with good storytelling, which can result in pretentiously puzzling television; of which I’m very […]

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 […]

White supremacy is a series of unending violences. As a massive system designed to privilege and preserve whiteness above all else, it requires these violences to keep itself alive, and whiteness must define itself against Blackness to achieve this. Black folks respond to, subvert, and resist this in a myriad of creative, warm-hearted, affirming, ingenious, […]

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 […]

This essay contains spoilers for HBO’s Game of Thrones and mentions rape. We have finally reached the moment when the war between the Night King’s army of the dead and the Westerosi resistance begins, the cataclysmic event to which 8 seasons of one of the most groundbreaking television series have been leading up. Along the […]

by Robert Randolph, Jr., Ph.D. This essay contains discussions of sexual violence, lynching, and the serial murder of queer Black men.  Writer’s Note: The Deputy Editor invited me to write about this subject and I have carried these men, the named and unnamed in my head for weeks. I blew the deadline time and time […]

by Daniel Johnson Toni Morrison, arguably the most influential living Black writer and some would say the most influential writer regardless of race, has crafted a body of work that is simultaneously grounded in a Black feminist/womanist politic, unquestionably Black, and commercially successful. In America, those things usually do not come all in the same […]