27 Search results for "writing rooms"

Reading for Our Lives: How Book Bans Leave Black Kids Behind
by Tayler Simon In the 2024-2025 school year, more than 4,000 unique titles were banned in the United States. Titles like All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson and The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison were among the most challenged books, reflecting a trend of targeting books by Black and/or LGBTQ+ authors. While all […]
Teen Vogue and the Fallacy of Radical Political Performance
by Jenn M. Jackson, PhD In August 2017, I received a text message from a dear friend. The text read, “Hey darling, would you be interested in writing a 800 – 1000 word piece about white women’s role in white supremacy for Teen Vogue? They reached out to me about it but I’d rather pass […]
Black Youth Project Relaunches Digital Magazine
A rebuilt home for Black feminist, abolitionist storytelling—created to protect community memory, sustain truth-telling, and expand our archive. CHICAGO, IL (February 26, 2026) — Black Youth Project (BYP) announces the relaunch of its digital platform at a moment when Black media is being systematically eroded—from publications closing without warning to the displacement of Black women […]
This Didn’t Begin With Us
Creative expression did not begin with writing. It began with voice — with stories spoken across rooms, songs carried across distance, rhythms tapped into tabletops and knees when words alone could not hold what needed to be said. Long before notebooks, microphones, or publishing platforms, Black communities were shaping experience into sound and gesture so […]
The internet, as a digital looking glass, can normalize violence for Black boys
by Donnie Moreland I’m entering my apartment lot, around 9:45 PM, having returned from the gym. My vision often obscured around this time, I’m hurried to brake as two figures creep along in front of me. The two feel my headlights on their backs, thus they oblige my curiosity, and turn around. They are Black […]
“Machine Learning” by Donnie Moreland
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 […]
For Black people in the face of all this death, sadness is the work
Recounting sad shit depleted me, so I stopped writing publicly for a long time. I stopped towards the beginning of this absurdity of a year, but I’m still as exhausted as ever. I got tired of feeling like for Black people in the face of all this death, there’s only so much we can do. […]
I love fashion, but—as a fat woman—it doesn’t always love me back
by Kamilah Bush I love clothes. I love fashion and style. I love all kinds of clothes from the big fashion houses to things I’ve fished out of thrift store bins. I watch the major award shows just for the gowns. My favorite holiday is The First Monday in May, also known as the Met […]
I became a sex and consent educator with Black youth in mind
by Maya Williams This essay mentions r/pe. One day, in the fifth grade, I was playing outside and fell on my crotch. I ran inside crying to my mom, “I hurt my…my…” gesturing to my pelvic area, “bad part.” The one thing I can appreciate from my mother was how she immediately responded, “No, your […]
Mental health treatment is a Black tradition, white people just took credit for it
by Imade Nibokun Black people invented mental health treatment before the “pray it away” stigma and the white supremacy that produced it. While Black folks continue to address the stigmas attached to mental illness, we must also acknowledge that Black mental health practitioners existed first. The first known physician in history is an Egyptian architect […]
There will never be a “Sexual Revolution” under capitalism
by Marq M. In July 2012, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration approved Truvada as Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP). Simultaneously, there’s been increasing awareness around additional benefits of Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART) as a method of preventing HIV transmission, as well as reinfection from other strains. That understanding caught on to an extent that, in […]
We need Restorative Justice in our schools, not more police
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 […]