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4 Hospitalizations, 3 Diagnoses, 2 Scared Parents and 1 Very Sad Woman
Editor’s note: Until recently, mental health and illness were taboo subjects in the black community. But thanks to the efforts of those brave enough to speak on it, that’s changing. In that vein, The Root team is taking this week during Mental Health Awareness Month to write about how mental health has touched our lives.…
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Dominate
I wanted to believe it didn’t mean anything. The smell of whiskey on his breath. The hurried kiss and his tongue latched around my left nipple. The gentle suckling as my abrasive wool sweater remained bunched against my throat. I told myself it meant nothing and I was nothing but an ends to a means.…
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It’s an Explanation, Not an Excuse
“He needs someone to treat him like the teacher treated Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker,” I said. The “he” I was referring to was Kanye West and his latest “Make America great again”-fueled, “deep thoughts” tweets that scream mania, but he insists he’s fine. (That is so something a manic person would say. When…
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Once Upon Once on This Island With Tamyra Gray
There are probably a few ways to read the wondrous musical Once on This Island, which originally debuted in 1990 and was revived on Broadway in New York City in December 2017. Perhaps it’s a lesson about following your heart against incredible odds. Maybe it’s a tale about the occasional perils of falling in love…
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How Physics Works and Other Things I Learned at All Star Code’s 5th-Anniversary Celebration
So I’m at All Star Code’s fifth-anniversary event at the High Line Hotel in New York City on Wednesday, and one of the program’s students, Alex Reyes, asks me if I know how the video game “Pong” works. I—who haven’t thought about “Pong,” a table tennis simulation game, in eons—realize that I have no clue…
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I Got Goddess Locs and Now I Feel (and Look) Very Regal, but … Boy, Was It a Journey
First things first, I have a lot of hair. It’s a lot even though I cut if off by several inches nearly a year ago after I decided to stop getting blowouts to give my hair a break. It’s just dense, thick hair that does what it wants when it wants and has more than…
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They Said It Was Private. She Said It Was on-the-Record. The Reality? It’s Complicated
In the nine years of BET Networks’ Leading Women Defined summit, Jeanine Liburd, chief marketing and communications officer at BET, had never seen anything like this. A journalist, Pulitzer Prize-winning fashion critic Robin Givhan of the Washington Post, was booted from this conference, a first for the gathering of professional women. These women, about 150…
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Never Bring Cicely Tyson Water in a Bottle, and Other Lessons From AT&T’s Humanity of Connection Event
If I am lucky enough to make it to 93, I want to be a fly 93 just like Harlem’s own, the legend, actress Cicely Tyson. One, she dresses impeccably. Two, she’s both wondrous and intimidating. As someone who loves (and still fears) her soon-to-be 90-year-old grandmother, I can only imagine what Tyson is like…
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Harlem Haberdashery’s 5th Annual Masquerade Ball Was ‘a Mood’
I’m back, Antisocialites! After spending most of the winter trying to both not freeze outdoors and not die from the sauna that is my radiator-heated apartment, I have to say, I really didn’t go to any parties. Oh, I went out on the rare occasion, but my social life (and this column about my social…
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So … Will Hollywood Finally Learn This Lesson, or Nah?
When writer-director Jordan Peele won his Best Original Screenplay Oscar for 2017’s biggest hit, Get Out, I cheered. When cast members of 2018’s biggest hit so far, Marvel’s Black Panther, walked the red carpet at the 90th Academy Awards, I swooned. And when I looked out at the sea of (mostly) white people attending the…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
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4 Hospitalizations, 3 Diagnoses, 2 Scared Parents and 1 Very Sad Woman
Editor’s note: Until recently, mental health and illness were taboo subjects in the black community. But thanks to the efforts of those brave enough to speak on it, that’s changing. In that vein, The Root team is taking this week during Mental Health Awareness Month to write about how mental health has touched our lives.…
-
Dominate
I wanted to believe it didn’t mean anything. The smell of whiskey on his breath. The hurried kiss and his tongue latched around my left nipple. The gentle suckling as my abrasive wool sweater remained bunched against my throat. I told myself it meant nothing and I was nothing but an ends to a means.…
-
It’s an Explanation, Not an Excuse
“He needs someone to treat him like the teacher treated Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker,” I said. The “he” I was referring to was Kanye West and his latest “Make America great again”-fueled, “deep thoughts” tweets that scream mania, but he insists he’s fine. (That is so something a manic person would say. When…
-
I Got Goddess Locs and Now I Feel (and Look) Very Regal, but … Boy, Was It a Journey
First things first, I have a lot of hair. It’s a lot even though I cut if off by several inches nearly a year ago after I decided to stop getting blowouts to give my hair a break. It’s just dense, thick hair that does what it wants when it wants and has more than…
-
They Said It Was Private. She Said It Was on-the-Record. The Reality? It’s Complicated
In the nine years of BET Networks’ Leading Women Defined summit, Jeanine Liburd, chief marketing and communications officer at BET, had never seen anything like this. A journalist, Pulitzer Prize-winning fashion critic Robin Givhan of the Washington Post, was booted from this conference, a first for the gathering of professional women. These women, about 150…
-
So … Will Hollywood Finally Learn This Lesson, or Nah?
When writer-director Jordan Peele won his Best Original Screenplay Oscar for 2017’s biggest hit, Get Out, I cheered. When cast members of 2018’s biggest hit so far, Marvel’s Black Panther, walked the red carpet at the 90th Academy Awards, I swooned. And when I looked out at the sea of (mostly) white people attending the…
