8 Search results for "transgenerational trauma"

Reflecting on GayL Jones’ ‘CoRregidora’ and its excavation of transgenerational traumas on the body
Editor’s Note: May is Mental Health Awareness Month and National Masturbation Month. This is also the month that we celebrate Mother’s Day. At BYP, we will be exploring these topics alongside the theme of Imagination and the Arts, and we are interested in publishing works that address these topics and the things surrounding them. This […]
Jordan Peele’s ‘Us’ contends with unresolved trauma, and a host of other unsettling things
This essay contains spoilers for Us. In the surface story of Us, the Wilson family travels to Santa Cruz for summer vacation and finds themselves stalked by doppelgängers in a sudden home invasion, but there is so much more to be found beneath it. Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o) and Gabe (Winston Duke), with daughter Zora (Shahadi […]
Reflecting on Patrick Chamoiseau’s ‘Slave Old Man’ and physical memories of the enslaved
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 […]
Interview: Kiese Laymon’s ‘Heavy’ reminds us that Blackness can be abundant in a world trying to make us disappear
This essay discusses child abuse, sexual violence, addiction, and extreme weight loss I tell him about my recent trip up to Philly and what happened on the way back. Our Uber driver overheard a conversation between myself, a child of the Carolinas, and my friend, the most Texas Texan I know, in which she told […]
I am a childfree Black woman and I owe my womb to no one
This essay contains discussions of death in childbirth and reproductive violences “Who she pregnant for?” This is how I remember my aunts inquiring about the potential father of any given person’s unborn child while I was growing up. Not “Who are they pregnant by?” or “Who are they pregnant with?” The question was always, Who […]
Reflecting on my toxic relationship with a mother who never loved me
by Kya Warnsley Once upon a time, there seemed to be a widely-shared norm among Black families in America in which children were being forced to abide by the “What goes on in this house, stays in this house” ideology. No matter what was going on behind closed doors, it had to be handled amongst the […]
Black conspiracy and skepticism persist because we believe the evidence of our experience
by Donnie Moreland There is a whispered binding between Black folks and the truth. Less truth, in that meta-ethical way we discern the spiritually evidential as Black folks, but truth telling. The expressions, negotiations and altercations with, and of, “facts.” How we tell the truth, digest it and confirm that truth as just that; gospel. […]
Looking to the Blues as record of Black folks’ loss and longing
by Donnie Moreland This essay mentions domestic violence. August Wilson once noted, “The blues are important primarily because they contain the cultural expression and the cultural response to blacks in America and to the situation that they find themselves in.” I believe this to be true, in so far as the Blues may no longer […]