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  • Welcome to The Root Institute, Featuring Interviews With Stacey Abrams, Cory Booker, Taraji P. Henson and Many More

    Welcome to The Root Institute, Featuring Interviews With Stacey Abrams, Cory Booker, Taraji P. Henson and Many More

    It’s happening! A gathering of the minds—from politics featuring Stacey Abrams and Ayanna Pressley to entertainment and culture with Ava DuVernay and Lee Daniels to health and wealth with Taraji P. Henson and Cory Booker to social justice with Tarana Burke of #MeToo. It’s time to sit down and talk about how we can take…

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  • Where the Only Pain Is Champagne

    Where the Only Pain Is Champagne

    I once threw a party for myself that lasted 10 years. I want to say it was a celebration, or at least that’s how it started out. I wanted to celebrate life after so many years of being held back and held down by my illness, so I started going out and drinking almost every…

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  • Beyoncé, Tina Knowles-Lawson and Mothers of the Movement Call Out 'Modern-Day Voter Suppression,' Urge Senate to Pass HEROES Act

    Beyoncé, Tina Knowles-Lawson and Mothers of the Movement Call Out 'Modern-Day Voter Suppression,' Urge Senate to Pass HEROES Act

    Today, June 25, marks the 7th anniversary of the Shelby County v. Holder case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court found that Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional. As we continue conversations surrounding voter suppression, especially given the issues surrounding the recent Democratic primary election in Kentucky, it is time to take…

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  • What Juneteenth and My Father Taught Me About 'Expectations'

    What Juneteenth and My Father Taught Me About 'Expectations'

    I wouldn’t know Juneteenth without my father. He’s the Texan. He grew up celebrating the holiday that started on June 19, 1865, when slaves on Galveston Island, Texas, finally learned they’d been freed under the Emancipation Proclamation two years prior. Even though he now lived in St. Louis, he’d always make the same jokey reference…

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  • Black Journalists and Covering the Storm That Never Passes

    Black Journalists and Covering the Storm That Never Passes

    I knew what I was getting into. I grew up reading the newspaper daily, since about age 11. I started watching the evening news—both the local and the national broadcasts—around the same time. My earliest media memories are of the 1987 Iran-Contra hearings and the Challenger explosion the year prior. Every weekend I watched Tim…

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  • The 19 Things I Cooked in Self-Isolation and What They Say About My Mental State

    The 19 Things I Cooked in Self-Isolation and What They Say About My Mental State

    “I’ll do something that makes me happy.” That’s how I justified that red velvet cake I made that I didn’t even bother to put icing on, as I was so happy to eat it just plain. Greedily, like a little kid. But it was a large and I had to eventually slice it up and…

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  • How to Win Friends and Influence People in a Psychiatric Ward

    They tried to make it nice. They festooned the rec room in plastic Christmas decorations and bought us all donuts. There was even a special meal—dressing and gravy with a slice of turkey. But store-bought donuts and cafeteria holiday dinner didn’t change the fact that we all—patients and nurses included—were spending Christmas in an L.A.…

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  • When Can I See You Again?

    When I call my father on the weekends, we talk about a myriad of things. How the family is doing, politics, food, my mental health, and…of course, the halcyon past when his beloved, comical aunts were still cracking jokes, when his kind mother was still doling out hugs, when he and his brothers were young…

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  • Coronavirus Could Be an Introvert’s Sweet Dream or an Agoraphobe’s Beautiful Nightmare

    I think we’re alone now. There doesn’t seem to be anyone around. Because we’re all isolated in our homes. An introvert’s dream, and a recovering agoraphobe’s nightmare, I’m very torn about social distancing by staying at home, as many have chosen to be in New York City. As we wait to see the ultimate outcome…

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  • Christmas for One

    There’s a Christmas song by Jackson 5-era Michael Jackson that appears on the 1973 double album—A Motown Christmas—that has been beautifully destroying me since I was a child. It’s called “Little Christmas Tree” and it is, by far, the most depressing holiday song in the Motown Christmas canon. The song tells the story of Christmas…

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