I’ve had a lot on my mind lately. Different issues, same line of thoughts. Police brutality especially as pertains to the African American community. Gay marriage and the Indiana freedom to discriminate laws. Women’s rights and contraception. Earth rights and fracking and climate change, etc. My sister T’ni recently asked me if I were feminist […]
Hey Baby! A Special Case of Street Harassment in Washington D.C.
I was recently walking down a street in D.C deep in multiple streams of thought. One, that Eden Hazard goal against Manchester United is indeed quite sweet for Chelsea but oh so painful for me to see. Manchester United, when will we recover? Two, where am I now and where am I walking to? Three, […]
Gender Fluidity and Women’s Colleges, Part II
Gender fluidity at an institution whose mission is to empower members of a single sex, in this case female, can only be an end to said institution whose beginning came from an era when gender was binary – male or female.We no longer live in such a world. When Facebook decided last year to be […]
The Sex Lives of African Girls by Taiye Selasi
The African Women’s Book Club was supposed to read Dust by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor but most found it hard to get through, if they had started it at all. So a short story was recommended in its place so that when we met we would have something to talk about while enjoying each others dishes. […]
Top 10 Influential Books in my Life
I usually ignore social media challenges but today I was challenged by a good friend on Facebook to share my ten most influential books. This friend likes to read the kind of non-fiction books that a college professor of any discipline would choose to assign for his courses. As you can clearly see from my […]
It’s All About Butts These Days
So I did not want to get into the discussion of Kim Kardarshian breaking the internet and the audacity or bravery thereof. But I can’t help myself. I am simultaneously amused and disgusted that the butt is having a pop culture moment. As the owner of a plump posterior and the wide hips and sturdy […]
Where are the Nigerian Schoolgirls?
It has been two weeks since around 230 schoolgirls were kidnapped from their boarding school in northern Nigeria by a militant Islamic group known as Boko Haram which claims ties to Al Qaeda. Boko Haram roughly means “non-Islamic education is a sin” in Hausa and was founded in 2002 to uphold sharia law. Their early […]
Black in Amsterdam
Isaac Israel. Portrait of a Wounded Soldier (1882) Rijksmuseum. Depicts a Belanda Hitam (Zwarte Hollander) originally from Elmina, Ghana When I was deciding on a European break this summer, I purposely decided against Barcelona or any other locale that I envisioned I could be mistaken for a prostitute simply on the basis of my dark […]
Public women and prostitutes in pre-colonial Ghana
So while scouring the internet for more information regarding the African prostitutes of Europe I learned that some of the Ghanaian prostitutes are not actually Ghanaian but Nigerian women who have secured Ghanaian passports and that a lot of the Nigerian women involved in this trade in general come from Benin City, Edo State. I […]
The African Prostitutes in Europe
With my recent move and acquisition of a flat-screen TV, I bought a Roku and now am regularly getting my daily news from Al Jazeera. Not only do they inform me of what is going on in the world, they also have thought-provoking original documentaries. Last week, it was a re-broadcast of a 2011 special […]
A lover of mangoes. A woman - smart, without pretense, lefthanded, Afropolitan - navigating this thing called life. An unapologetic believer in social justice and karma. Choosing to radiate positive energy and be true to myself. Here, my musings.