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Occupy Movement: The Fire This Time
In 1967 Ericka Jenkins met John Huggins during her first year at HBCU Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. America was in turmoil. Inspired by a photo essay documenting police brutality against Huey Newton, she and John climbed into their car and headed for Los Angeles. Within a year, the two teenagers had married and become active…
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How Anita Hill Woke a Generation of Feminists
Close your eyes. Can you remember what you were doing in October of 1991? Zoom in on the crisp fall days of the Senate hearings when Anita Hill stood up and told her truth. Can you see it? I can. I was a senior at Yale, and I had a very cute boyfriend whom I…
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The Italian Job
Kara Walker is tall, fashionable and reserved when I meet her in the lobby of the chic Residence Du Parc, a brutalist landmark of poured concrete adorned with iconic examples of modernist and postmodern art. Outside huge windows, Turin is celebrating itself: Italian flags drip from every window, flutter along every boulevard. Kara wears flat…
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The Root Reading List: Summer Mix
You Are Free: Stories, by Danzy Senna (Riverhead Books) From the author of the best-selling Caucasia, these stories tightrope between defined states: life with and without mates, children or the reference points provided by race, class and gender. Tensions arise for a liberal couple when their son is admitted into an elite private school; a…
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The Root Reading List: Poetry
All hail National Poetry Month, in which we are allowed — encouraged, even — to revel in words laid one by one without the usual constraints of punctuation or the so-called rational sequencing of prose. In honor of this month of literary freedom, my picks for April are from three of our freshest, most accomplished…
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The Root Reading List: Love, Money and Harlem on Our Minds
How the West Was Lost: Fifty Years of Economic Folly — and the Stark Choices Ahead, by Dambisa Moyo (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $25) How the West Was Lost offers a bold account of the decline of the economic supremacy of the West. Dambisa Moyo, author of Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and…
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Just Give Me My Breast Pump
The vitriol swirling around Michelle Obama’s support of the IRS’ reclassification of breast pumps as a deductible medical expense makes me ill. Conservative commentary from Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and others who accuse the first lady of creating a “nanny state” and catering to special interests — specifically African-American women, who are statistically less likely…
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Egypt's Nawal El Saadawi: 'We Will Not Let Egypt Burn'
Nawal El Saadawi — an Egyptian psychiatrist, scholar, novelist, feminist and activist — has been agitating for change in her home country for more than 50 years. An outspoken opponent of female genital mutilation, she was fired from her position as Egypt’s director of health education in 1972. When President Anwar Sadat threw her in…
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Is Prisoner Transport Now Child's Play?
Believe me, I do not want to cast aspersions on the famous Danish toy company that goes by the name “Lego Group.” My 6-year-old is in love with the little plastic blocks and plays with them for hours at a time, leaving me to tap away blissfully on this keyboard that magically connects me to…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
