culture

  • Lay Off Soror Barbie!

    When I’m correctly tagged as a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated, I’d like to think that it’s because I exude ambition, class and a belief in paying it forward. Experience has taught me otherwise. Some people look no further than the color of my skin and length of my hair. The stereotype of…

  • The All-Star Jam

    Baseball’s All-Star game is this week, but I regard the mid-season break in the action as more significant than the game itself. Now that we have dozens of interleague games crowding the schedule, the All-Star game itself feels kind of unnecessary. Yes, it determines home field advantage in the World Series, but the last World…

  • Smith's Rules for Global Domination

    While you weren’t looking, no doubt tracking the fortunes of the Hope, Will Smith became the world’s biggest movie star. With the financial success of his superhero comedy Hancock ($62 million domestic on opening weekend, $190 million in its first full week global), Smith can claim five films that opened at No. 1 on July…

  • Julia’s, Ollie’s Trolley, Over-the-Rhine…

    I covered my first NAACP convention 11 years ago in Pittsburgh. Next week will mark my second, again in the city where I live (now Cincinnati). A lot has changed; then I was an intern at the New Pittsburgh Courier, my hometown black paper. Today, I’m a bona fide journalist with a serious body of…

  • A ComplAKAted Kind of Sisterhood

    I have always been a tomboy. My idea of a knight in shining armor is a guy who gives me ice cold beers and watches sports. I play flag-football on Saturdays. You will rarely catch me in a dress. I might seem like an unlikely candidate for AKA, but I really didn’t have much of…

  • $4.79 a Gallon? That Ain't Regular!

    When you grow up in a big California city, you learn at an early age that factors beyond your control can have a powerful impact on your life; factors like earthquakes, violence and whether your family lives in the mean flatlands or the glorious hills. This year, three young Californians have been forced to add…

  • Will Work for Gas!

    My first taste of freedom came in the form of an ’87 Buick Century—Ol’ Bessy, my older brother called her. I just called her an escape. Back then, all it took was a few dollars to keep her gassed. Skim a little from my lunch money, charge a few kids for rides home after practice,…

  • A Legendary Revival

    Certain birthdays are special for almost all jazz fans. On April 7, the mental iPod almost always lands on Billie Holiday classics in honor of Lady Day’s birthday. Ditto April 29 for Duke Ellington, May 26 for Miles Davis, September 23 for John Coltrane, March 9 for Ornette Coleman and October 10 for Thelonious Monk.…

  • Oh, What a Tangled Web, My Weave

    Strange things happen when the husband of a happily married woman goes out of town. She calls up her girlfriends and begs them to come over, plying them with champagne and cupcakes. She spends inordinate amounts of time online, staring at dresses that if her husband were home, he would mock derisively. “I hate those…

  • Growing Into My Big-Girl Clothes

    It took almost one year, hundreds of gallons in gas and several mall madness Saturdays, but I finally got it. “It” wasn’t just another low-cut shirt with a ring of elastic around the bust line. And it surely wasn’t another pair of too-tight jeans that required an inhale-exhale exercise to wiggle into. It was a…