Blonde as King: A Second Look at Beyonce’s Black As King
Author: C. C. Saunders
"I do not weep at the world; I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife" Zora Neale Hurston
My pen is my oyster knife...
Twitter: @womanistwriter
Email: whispersofawomanist@gmail.com
E-Portfolio:catherinecsaunders.weebly.com
Missing Toni Morrison
What is it to miss an icon? A sorcerer of words? She who, as editors, resurrected black writers from the reject pile into pillars in black literary genealogy? She who gifted the world the gifts of Gayl Jones, Lucille Clifton, and Henry Dumas? What is it to miss she who employed prose to build worlds—worlds [...]
Only the Soul Survives: Black Life and Legacy
To say that last week has been quite a week seems to downplay that 2020 has been quite a year. To encounter this past week while reading Alice Walker’s inaugural novel The Third Life of Grange Copeland, proved a context suited for a movie’s framing. During his first two lives, Walker’s Grange Copeland is absent [...]
Black is King, A Black Female Perspective
Beyonce’s Black is King delivers an aesthetically pleasing cultural collage. From waterfalls to regal braiding, the film captures the pure beauty of black people who occupy both central and peripheral spaces in the film. The music also engenders a Pan-Africanist sound that melds the diaspora together in a melody as diverse a the colors of [...]
A Night in the Nation’s Capital: A Reflection
Twas an interesting night at the nation’s capital. The night was hot and humid, a minute improvement from the glaring heat that inundated the earlier hours of the day. I could not help but think about my ancestors who under the same sweltering heat, worked from sun-up to sun-down. Now, another ancestor lay amidst the [...]
Cognitive Bondage and the Cost of Ownership
What can you own if you do not own yourself?
Emmett Till, John Lewis, and Learning from those who Left Us
Saturday, July 25, 2020, marked what would have been Emmett Till’s seventy-ninth birthday. Till, a black child whose spilled blood evidences the evil cast against the black collective, maintains his eternal youth in more ways than one. Had Till lived to see adulthood, he would be younger than many millennial grandparents betraying his brutal murder, [...]
To Move a Mountain: A Reflection
Something irksome about the contemporary moment-be it the protests or the Nick Cannon scenario and how it continues to unfold, is a false alignment with unity and change. What I mean here is that the present moment casts those who make strides toward change as attaining company in quantity. A large component of pursuing true [...]
Black Mental Health as Popular Culture: A Black Female Perspective
The present fixation on black mental health appears to seize an obscure communal issue from hallway whispers to center stage. While black doctors like Dr. Bobby Wright, Dr. Francis Cress Wesling, and Dr. Amos Wilson engender this transition with their discourse, this is not what we see in the anti-black media. It is particularly, problematic [...]
Fatal Friendship
"A man who tosses worms into the river isn't necessarily a friend of the fish. All the fish who take him for a friend…usually end up in the frying pan.” -Malcolm X During a time where white allyship remains a constant source of contention, it is imperative to discuss the platonic dynamic as symptomatic of [...]
