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Single-Minded: Takeout on Thanksgiving
I ate lukewarm Thai food for Thanksgiving. The original plan was to fly home to Los Angeles — a place I haven’t lived in since the ’90s but will always refer to as “home.” Expedia.com, however, made it painfully obvious that eating for one day would replace eating for the rest of the month. So…
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Single-Minded: There Are No Black Kate Middletons
“It’s not easy being green? Try being brown in a sea of white surrounded by blue.” That’s a line from my collections of essays about life and love, Bitch Is the New Black. In the essay “The Beatitudes of St. Clair,” I wrote about being the only little brown girl living in Avalon, a white…
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Single-Minded: Me, My Mother and 'For Colored Girls'
My mother just called Tyler Perry “brilliant.” This is the same woman who once told me that Perry’s TBS sitcom House of Payne was “buffcoonery” — some monstrous hybrid of “buffoon” and “coonery.” Last summer I took her to see Why Did I Get Married Too? Her response? “I’m glad you paid.” She doesn’t mince…
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Single-Minded: Relationship Politics
“Throw the bums out!” Whether it’s a midterm election, a library after dark or one’s love life, the rallying cry appeals to the secret spring-cleaning obsession in all of us. Bagging the old and parading the new is a one-two punch that requires little sweat and makes us feel that much more fit. Throw ’em…
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Single-Minded: Sorry Apologies
If you have to ask for an apology, you probably don’t deserve one. Whether it’s Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife, Ginni, asking sexual-harassment whistle blower Anita Hill to apologize for what she did to her husband, or Rand Paul volunteer Tim Profitt claiming that the protester on whose head he stomped owes him an apology (he…
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Tyler Perry's View of 'For Colored Girls'
“This is a far cry from Madea,” Barbara Walters said matter-of-factly on last Friday’s episode of The View — and Tyler Perry agreed. Sitting down with the show’s co-hosts, the writer-director-producer-actor explained his initial fear in adapting Ntozake Shange’s legendary For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf from 64 pages…
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Tyler Perry on the View
Helena Andrews is a contributing editor at The Root and author of Bitch Is the New Black, a memoir in essays. Follow her on Twitter.
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Single-Minded: I Am Dr. Faye
This time last year, everyone was into “Mad Men”-ing themselves. No Facebook or Gchat avatar was safe. Don Drapers, Roger Sterlings, Joan Holloways and Peggy Olsons — the stars of AMC’s period drama about white male privilege — invaded the Internet like so many inch-square viruses. After Sunday’s finale, my avatar is getting a makeover.…
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Single-Minded: On Turning the Big 3-0
By Helena Andrews In two weeks I’ll be 30. The big three-oh. The end of my 20s. The dirtiest of birthdays. But I can’t for the life figure out why this is such a big deal. Back in December, when The Washington Post profiled me, my sarcasm didn’t quite translate perfectly in print: “My life…
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Single-Minded: The Real Meaning of Privilege
Someone called me “privileged” the other day, and I took it as a backhanded insult. How dare you! Lucky? Sure. Grateful? Most days. But privileged? Those were the kids who didn’t have to answer phones in the main office every summer to pay for thick copies of The Odyssey and The Iliad. Those were the…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
