I Am Woman

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/09/AR2009120904546.html?sid=ST2010041904904- Helena AndrewsThe second issue I hear, mostly from heterosexual black women, is a deep concern about being un-partnered, which I blame on an overwhelming discourse around this idea that there are no available black men.So in some ways, young women may be more connected to these gender scripts than we were, because marriage and motherhood is at the center of popular discourse.- Beverly Guy-Sheftallhttp://www.theroot.com/views/root-interview-beverly-guy-sheftall?page=0,2...

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There's No Good Music Left!

"There is no good music around anymore! I feel sorry for your generation!" My boyfriend's relative said to us recently on a car trip tp their hometown of Philadelphia. We were in for an 8-hour drive, and she was determined to make use of the time that she had with us. I could tell that she enjoyed speaking with us. We defied her stereotypes of the typical 20-year-old college students.I shook my head as I glanced at her from the rearview mirror. I loved having conversations about current music. I'm not the typical music listener of my generation....

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Move Me

At the same time as my decision to wear my hair in its natural state has really increased, so has my decision to delve deeper into my writing. No longer do I want to just write a pretty sentence. I want to write a sentence that has to be rewritten over and over again before it makes me say BOO-YOW. I want to write not just for the sake of being "deep...yo, that was deep, man". No, I want to "go free", as Tamara Jeffries, my Creative Nonfiction instructor has been pleading with us to do. But no amount of pleading and prodding from her can take us...

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Story

I recently saw Tyler Perry's film adaptation of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf, and although this was not a creative nonfiction piece, it does have to do with biographies in a sense that Perry took the stories of seven women and put them to the screen. He studied the play (over a thousand times, he said in a letter on his website), studied the women, did the same kind of research that we would have done had we continued our biography assignment in class. He could not speak to these women because they did...

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Tell My Story

What makes someone's story interesting enough to put to paper? Can any of us make that judgment? Yes. We all have backgrounds, true. We all don't have stories, also true, in my opinion. Not everyone possesses the skills necessary to put you in their shoes so that you can live their story. So that you can understand it.Which is where writers come in. We have (or we should have) the ability to take the spoken word and craft it into something written, something tangible, something to make you look at that person and say 'Wow...so THAT's why..." or...

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& Scene!

Chairs sprawled across the room that serves not only as a classroom, but as a computer lab, cafeteria, counseling center, apartment and at the moment, a church in Virginia from years ago, through the mind of a young Tamara Jeffries. My classmates and I sat in amazement as she took us back in time to visit with her the inside of her mother's purse."How did you do that?" We all whispered with our eyes, too awestruck to ask the question. Ms. Jeffries is as close to as a writing god as we have close enough in our reach. "I'm not that different from...

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Thick in The Words

My Creative Nonfiction teacher, Ms. Tamara Jeffries, one of the most brilliant teachers and people I know, has these sayings that she likes to use, and most of them I forget, but one stuck with me. She told us that she wants our writing to be "thick on the page". We need to FEEL our writing. It needs to be beyond surface level analysis.Sounds easy, huh?I know, I know...I'm being sarcastic.But her advice is what I strive for in all my writing, whether I knew it or not. I want my writing to jump out at you on the page. I attempted that as I prepared...

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For Writers Who Have Considered Rewriting When Gender is Enuf

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/09/for_colored_girls_trailer.htmlhttp://clutchmagonline.com/newsgossipinfo/tyler-perrys-for-colored-girls-gets-november-release/For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow is EnufI was 16, maybe 17, when I was first introduced to this choreoplay by Ntozake Shange. When the rainbow is enuf...how powerful those words were to a 16-year-old girl struggling to find acceptance within herself can't even be described. One of the resident writers that I was fortunate enough to have as a teacher...

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That Old Thing Back

An interview that I have yet to see wasn't what caught my attention. I, like many other people in my generation and the one before me, treat The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill as a Bible of some sorts put to beat sung by an angelic voice- that which belongs to Lauryn Hill. Although that album was released in 1998 (12 years ago) and Hill has yet to have an album to reach its success, her name still starts a flurry of conversation, partially because of the privacy that she has set aside for herself.The music journalist Toure' recently did an interview...

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Becoming Butterfly

As I am writing this blog post, a butterfly lands quietly on the window of my car. At first I didn't notice it, but it became harder to ignore as it flapped its wings ever so gracefully, oblivious to the fact that I am watching it. I became excited because I absolutely love butterflies and what they represent. I love how they are originally caterpillars and then transform into butterflies. My favorite saying is "Just when the ccaterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly."In my Creative Nonfiction class, we have been assigned the...

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because of all of this

i have been bored out of my mind since June 30th, when i came back from my whirlwind of travels. i am not the type of person to sit idly by and watch life pass me by. i get bored very easily, & i like to take advantage of pretty much every opportunity that life throws at me. being stuck at home w/ no car & no money has pretty much sucked & made me forget about all of the amazing things that i've done in just two months. it made me forget that from June 2009-June 2010, I have not stopped. Last summer was the internship w/ the Chicago...

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To The Middle

1st blog entry whoop whoop!!! what to write, what to write!well, i guess i'll start with my facebook status from yesterday. [well, one of them]. -i want to get back to that place where my every fiber, my whole being was about God. i don't feel that closeness in my spirit that i once did. i gotta get back to the middle.-it might be pretty deep for my first blog entry, but hey....might as well start with the truth.i don't know where the disconnection came from, but i've felt it since i came to college. funny thing is, i attend church more now than...

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