culture

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…

Book Excerpt Editor’s Note: This summer marks 20 years from what is considered by many to be hip-hop’s Golden Age, a tumultous period in urban life that fueled an explosion in black cultural nationalism in cities across the U.S. The following essay is adapted from Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and…

The Democratic Party’s primary race has reached a dangerous stage for black people. It has come to this: Both the Obama and Clinton campaigns are apparently willing to sacrifice black citizenship rights in order to win the Democratic nomination for president. On one hand, we have Sen. Clinton’s supporters being charged with intentionally trying to…

When I first moved to the U.S. in August 1992 at age 11, I had no idea what hip-hop was other than the caricature playing on the TV set in my grandparents’ living room in Kyiv, Ukraine. Come to think of it, what I knew probably amounted to neither hip nor hop, much less hip-hop.…

Last year, when “Good Morning America” anchor Robin Roberts found a lump in her breast during a self-exam, her first thought was: This can’t be; I’m too young! Yes, at 46, Roberts was younger than age 55, when two out of three invasive breast cancers are diagnosed. But she’s also black. Though African-Americans are less…