877 Search results for "fear"

by Donnie Moreland It’s the eve of what folks are calling the “most important presidential election of our lives.” I’m being told to prepare. I’m being told to panic. I strap both ends of my cloth mask around my ears to drop my ballot at a county library. This is the second time I’m having […]

There aren’t enough accessible therapists to go around. I met this reality after an Ifa divination that I got while I was in Cuba, and my dreams for an entire year afterward, told me that I needed to focus on my mental health. My ancestors were LOUD about the mental work that I needed to […]

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 […]

My mom apologizes to me and I’m glad she does. Mostly for small things, but sometimes for big things too. Recently, she apologized for her fatphobia towards me and how damaging it was to me growing up. I was appreciative. I thanked her.  Not long after that apology, she made no less than three fatphobic […]

The ghost in the wall knocked loudly above the girl’s head and she sprung from her sleep, getting her foot tangled in the clutches of her sheets before landing on her knees with a thud. A long wail escaped her throat as she winced, pushed herself up, and limped out of the room as fast […]

We search for the body of the ghost’s sister underneath what is left of the fifteen level building. It’s mid morning and the sky is black, its marine layer covered in thick fog and ash. All around us the packed city spreads open like a gate, beckoning. The world is quiet now, with everyone huddled […]

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 […]

Trigger warning: domestic violence, gun violence, mention of suicide  by Donnie Moreland  On April 3rd, 1964 and at the Cory Methodist Church, Malcolm X would give one of his most quotable speeches. The speech was titled, The Ballot or the The Bullet. He began with these words, “The question tonight, as I understand it, is […]

RaceBaitr editor-in-chief and writer Hari Ziyad describes their upcoming book Black Boy Out of Time (Little A, March 1, 2021) as part memoir, part social commentary, but its ambitions push it beyond even this genre-bending interpretation. What began as an attempt to detail their life as a Black queer person growing up with 18 siblings […]

by Hess Love “Colonialism, capitalism, the myth of white supremacy and all interwoven systems of oppression, have never allowed for the divine unique spark of children to truly flourish – and they were never designed to. Singing this spark back to us is the quest that many of us spend our adult lives journeying upon. […]

by Donnie Moreland The first time I held a gun, I was afraid. The scenario was all too awkwardly cinematic to not be memorable. It was on a vacation with my mother to my grandparents’ South Carolina home. Sitting in their entertainment room, my grandfather entered with two guns. A magnum revolver and shotgun. He […]

by Dom Alexander Rummaging through a dead man’s possessions is, perhaps, the strangest thing I’ve ever done. I sit on the floor in his room. The setting, orange sun seeps through the window. I breathe in the pungent cologne, still clinging onto curtains. The carpet sinks, coinciding with the dancing footsteps of a ghost, stepping […]