At age 14, I loved dirty dancing. We called it booty shaking back then. But I weighed less than 100 lbs and not much was shaking on me but bones. I would watch my summer camp friends dance while, in the corner, I twitched in a pattern that imitated rhythm to stay unnoticed. The girlsContinue reading “Tales from the B-side of a Skinny Twerker”
Category Archives: black culture
5 Great Things I Gave Up to Be Grown
Confession: I only pretend to be a serious adult. I love having a kid because I can indulge in “immature” activities with a living, breathing excuse. When I chase my daughter around the house, both us wearing ducky towels flowing from our heads, nobody can judge me. I’m being an engaged parent. If I tried thatContinue reading “5 Great Things I Gave Up to Be Grown”
MLK, Jr. Should’ve Kept His Day Job?
It is the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington. I grew up a black girl in a mostly white fundamental Baptist denomination. Only one white pastor ever let the truth leak out on their opinion of Martin Luther King, Jr. Our youth group climbed into the church van on a Friday evening for aContinue reading “MLK, Jr. Should’ve Kept His Day Job?”
Jealousy and Other ‘Female Traits’
“Males shouldn’t be jealous; that’s a female trait” —Jay-Z It’s not hard to tell that ‘a female trait,’ by Shawn Carter’s reckoning, is not something that a male would want to have. Simple psychology would’ve told him that men experience jealousy, too. Despite the fact that rappers (and their verses) are made of 15% truth,Continue reading “Jealousy and Other ‘Female Traits’”
Uncle Toms, Aunt Jemimas, and Other Distant Relatives
Harriet Beecher Stowe has likely rolled 500 miles in her grave by now. She wrote the second best-selling novel in the 19th century, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, only for it to be boiled down to the grime of an epithet over 200 years later: Uncle Tom. The title character she illustrated in 1852 laid down his life for escapingContinue reading “Uncle Toms, Aunt Jemimas, and Other Distant Relatives”
dara t. mathis 