15 Search results for "intimacies"

Steve McQueen’s ‘Bear’ is an exploration of intimacies among Black men
by Donnie Moreland Two Black men, their naked bodies shifting in-between spaces where shadows were not obstructed by an abrasive key-light. The slow moving image stripped bare of any noise aside from my own breath. Even still, their bodies colliding, their grunting, their moaning—though I could not hear—shook me as thunder might. I was disquieted, […]
Between Black artists and Black love
By Donnie Moreland It must’ve been 2015 when I first viewed Debbie Tucker Green’s Second Coming (2014). It’s a film which asks the question, what if the nativity story took place between two working class Black folks already raising a little boy in South London. It’s a mesmerizing dreamscape of rage and longing, orbited by […]
Police brutality does not end because of a pandemic, it is made worse by it
Content warning: mentions of slavery, police brutality “The buyers paraded them and made them dance. They opened their clothing to check for wounds; they pinched their limbs and flexed their muscles. They searched earnestly for scars, since scars were said to be evidence of a rebellious nature. When they finished their inspections, they posed questions […]
Steve McQueen’s ‘Western Deep’ is a counter memory for Black miners during South African Apartheid
by Donnie Moreland Steve McQueen’s Western Deep is a horror film. Though McQueen’s 2002 dual video installation (presented with Carib’s Leap) is, in form, video art, I feel it is possible to understand Western Deep as genre cinema. An exploration into the TauTona Mine Shaft No.3 of South Africa—also known as Western Deep—it is a […]
What Tamar Braxton’s comments about men not wanting sex reveal about compulsory (hetero)sexuality
Tamar Braxton has issued a non-apology following some recent comments in which she declared that men who lay beside women for several nights without initiating sex are secretly gay. On Instagram, she posted the following: The text reads, “The truth is ladies that these dudes out here really do be gay!! It ain’t enough money, […]
Black asexuals are not unicorns, there are more of us than we know
This essay contains discussions of sexual violence as well as racist violence and fetishization I personally know of fewer than five Black people who identify as asexual, and I’ve only met two of them in person. The others remain virtual friends for now, but I hope to meet them someday. Of course, these are just […]
When people defraud the world by impersonating Black womanhood
I always think of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) whenever someone pretends to be a Black woman or disingenuously evokes our aesthetics. While there are many who outright pretend to be Black women, there are also those convinced that they can somehow actually become Black women and others who simply benefit from appropriating our […]
‘Set It Off’ and the Black feminist lessons it still holds for us
This essay contains spoilers for Set It Off, and discusses sexual exploitation and state violence “Women respond to racism. My response to racism is anger. I have lived with that anger, ignoring it, feeding upon it, learning to use it before it laid my visions to waste, for most of my life. Once I […]
Black men need space to talk about their own sexual pleasure outside of domination
Editor’s Note: This Sexual Health and Awareness month, we will be exploring related issues at BYP, and we are interested in publishing works that address these topics. What does sexual health look like outside of cishetero norms? Where does the #MeToo movement go from here? What can we do to better support survivors, including survivors […]
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 […]
What I learned from studying my Black mother’s pedagogy of love
Editor’s Note: April is Black Women’s History Month. Throughout this month, Black Youth Project is celebrating Black women. This month is also National Minority Health Month, Autism Awareness Month, Sexual Assault Awareness Month, Child Abuse Prevention Month. We are interested in publishing works that address these topics and the things surrounding them. by Donnie Moreland […]
A meditation on intergenerational trauma and how we raise Black children
This essay contains discussion of suicide. by Donnie Moreland On the other side of her beautiful and hardened, bulging belly, I can feel them. My baby navigating the uterus of the woman I love, curious to the pressure of my palm on the soft brown flesh between them and I. I imagine their curiosity, or […]