culture

I was first placed in foster care at the age of 6 after my mom gave me away to a friend who abused me physically, mentally and emotionally. That was the beginning of a painfully long relationship with the foster care system, marked by 11 different placements, nine different schools and countless attempts to find…

OMG! Not another invite. Please, “friends,” I beg of you. They all start out the same. “Friend X has sent you an invitation.” Because this invite has come by e-mail and not through the Postal Service, it’s immediately clear that it’s not for pending nuptials or a bat mitzvah. It’s for yet another social networking…

I never realized, until recently, that I don’t know the day my mother died. I don’t think I ever knew. All I know is that I knew she was gone before anyone told me. I was ten when my mother died of Lupus, a disease of the red-blood cells that affects mostly African-American women between…

From 1987 to 2002, Mark McEwen was the face of CBS morning television. The warm, roly-poly McEwen, with his big moustache and bigger smile, made a perfect television weatherman. His sunny disposition and first-thing-in-the-morning cheer were nice to wake up to. But two years ago, as he puts it, “there was a change in the…

Jazz fans are world class in many regards, but especially when it comes to fretting. That’s not an insult; jazz lovers have good reason for concern. Despite the rise of programs like Jazz at Lincoln Center and organizations like SF Jazz and the Thelonious Monk Institute, jazz is starved for institutional support. Sales of jazz…

Every time a format changes – from tape to CDs to MP3s – some crucial information risks obsolescence and loss. That’s why my Mother’s Day present to my family wasn’t a card or a call. It was a digital version of an interview I taped with my grandmother, Elizabeth Evans, back in 1990. Eighteen years…

As I sit here in my bedroom with the door closed, reflecting on the beauty of motherhood, I am distracted by the mess that surrounds me. A Trident bubble gum package lays open on the floor, half of the gum devoured in one shot judging by the trail of empty wrappers around it. An open…

Don’t let “America’s Next Top Model” fool you—the politics of the runway are rarely so neatly wrapped up. Sure, four of the show’s nine winners so far have been black (plus Boricua Jaslene Gonzalez), but catwalks in the States and overseas have been slow to integrate as industry insiders still claim that non-white models just…

I root for both Chicago baseball teams, but I have Oakland A’s envy. I’ll bet a lot of other baseball fans suffer from the same syndrome, especially now that the A’s are one of the biggest surprises in baseball this season. It isn’t that the A’s win more than any other team. They don’t. It’s…

Yield: Serves 4 to 6 Soundtrack: “I Can’t Stand the Rain” by Ann Peebles from Brand New Classics Working on my first book, Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen, was a deeply spiritual process for me. I often tell close friends how the book was written through me. Inspired by a technique described in…