1553 Search results for "mother"

African Traditional Religions prepared me to grieve my mother
I’ve learned it’s best not to try to control how the memories of my mother show up, or what emotions they are wearing when they enter. This one is dressed in a rare crossbreed of inconsolable laughter and a stabbing sob, and it’s seeping out of my iphone from wherever the speaker is located on […]
My grandmother shows me what’s possible as a survivor of sexual violence
by J.A.O. Trigger and Content Warnings: This piece contains themes and descriptions of sexual and gender-based violence/r*pe, child abuse, death, and suicide. The most isolating of the identities I claim is my status as a survivor of both childhood sex abuse and of repeated rape in my adulthood. Sometimes, I find an incredible amount of […]
My mother proved protection is possible without police, even if she doesn’t know it
Sometimes, an answer is not an answer to everyone. Sometimes, whether something is an answer depends, like seeing a blue or gold dress or hearing yanny or laurel in that auditory illusion. Or like when Black people are finally allowed in token numbers to receive a few of the laurels we hear we should always […]
Recognizing the labor of Black women, mothers, and caretakers during COVID-19
by Jenn M. Jackson My sixty-eight year old mother has been an unpaid, unofficial caretaker for my grandmother for at least twenty years. She was a social worker for more than three decades. Now, she also works for free as an administrative assistant at church. After delivering fresh produce and cooked meals to my elderly […]
How I use ancestor veneration to navigate my Mother’s Death
by Hess Love Sometimes I feel like a motherless child… a long way from home- Negro Spiritual Sunday is Mother’s Day. And the grief of losing my mother regularly brings me to my knees. I don’t imagine this day being any different. Sometimes my grief is a distant shore, sometimes the water of it wades […]
Reflecting on “The Photograph” and Black mother-daughter relationships
by Kui Mwai Full bodied, multilayered, complex Black mother-daughter relationships are rarely captured on screen. It wasn’t until I watched Stella Meghie’s “The Photograph” that I realized just how much I was craving to see something akin to my mother and I’s relationship on film. “The Photograph” invites its viewers into characters Mae (Issa Rae) […]
The quiet call of ghosts: Dusting my grandmother’s photo reminds me of who I am
by Tiffany Hobbs She has her eyes. It was the first time I’d looked longer than a few seconds into the eyes of the woman in the photograph on my bookshelf. Looking longer introduced me to the inevitability of dying and death. I was hiding from her eyes, playing a game I was determined to […]
The Revolution of Black Mothering: Confronting a future that doesn’t always include us
by Hess Love belly of boat dissolves you, precipitates you into nonword from which you cry out, generates clamor of your protests, boat is your womb, a matrix, yet it expels you- Edouard Glissant I always wanted to be a mother. I wanted motherhood’s playfulness, its duty, its imagination and selflessness. Like most people that […]
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 […]
Intergenerational trauma is gendered, and other life lessons from my Black mother & sister
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.
Mother of MAGA hat wearing teen who terrorized Indigenous man blames “Black Muslims”
According to Newsweek, the mother of one of the teens from Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky wrote an angry e-mail to Heavy in response to their coverage of her son and his friends’ racist treatment of an Omaha Nation elder, Nathan Phillips that was caught on viral video at a protest. The mother blamed […]
How my mother made me a liar and forced me into the closet
by Indigo From the time I could coherently say “Yes, ma’am,” my mother told me that she would rather I tell her a painful, uncomfortable truth than to ever tell her a lie. She always said there was nothing in the world she hates more than dishonesty and deceitfulness—and that no matter how painful the […]