The Dream Rests on Our Backs

“Here is what I would like for you to know: In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body — it is heritage,” writes Ta-Nehisi Coates in Between the World and Me, his 2015 book written as a letter to his son. Thanks to Kate Gavino for the illustration below — she created authorContinue reading “The Dream Rests on Our Backs”

What Time Looks Like

I love how Terry Pitts, the writer on the blog Vertigo, writes about time: The cinematic version of time passing, which often shows a succession of calendar pages disappearing off the screen, blown away by the breeze, was never how I understood time. For me, it’s the constant repetition, the endless mimetic motion of theContinue reading “What Time Looks Like”

Monotony Is a Luxury: Walking While Black

I first read “Walking While Black,” a beautiful and poignant essay in LitHub by Garnette Cadogan, a few years ago. It’s about the complicated act of walking while black, both as a child on the streets of Kingston, Jamaica, and as an older man in New Orleans and New York City. I remembered it overContinue reading “Monotony Is a Luxury: Walking While Black”