culture

My introduction to portrait artist Kehinde Wiley was happenstance—a tag-along-type adventure with a photographer friend to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington. Upon entering the gallery, I was greeted by space: a labyrinth of hollowed rooms demanding silence on behalf of the stark white walls. Amid this absence, Wiley drew me in with bright colors…

Recipe Card

Cacao-Café No Lait Pudding Yield: 4 Servings Soundtrack: “Brown Paper People” by Lila Downs from Una Sangre – One Blood Growing up, I used to love chocolate pudding. Since Bill Cosby convinced my mom that dangling a pudding pop in front of me would be an incentive to eat all my vegetables, I would even…

In Ishmael Reed’s 1972 novel Mumbo Jumbo, a dangerous epidemic, “Jes Grew” threatens 1920s America. For the uninfected, the virus’ symptoms are troubling and sudden, centering on an obsession with the dances, lingo and clandestine locations associated with ragtime and jazz. Jes Grew infections start in the country’s colored precincts, but the virus soon shows…

The night before he was assassinated in 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously roared that he had “been to the mountaintop” and he had “seen the promised land” of freedom, justice, and equality. That spirit in the final phase of King’s life has been captured brilliantly by Chinese sculptor, Lei Yixin, who was commissioned…

I was born a ward of the state in Maine, and I grew up in the foster care system. I was blessed to have been placed with families who cared for, supported and guided me, and to have been loved by incredible women who gave me the discipline and confidence to develop a successful career…

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…