It took me a long time to write about Sapphire’s novel, Push, being adapted for the silver screen. But write I did and here’s what I came up with:
People who love this book will tell you that it’s a triumphal story of hope in the face of brutality and despair. And it is. But for [...]
Archive for January, 2009
Musings on ‘Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire.’
Posted in Nonfiction, PostBourgie, tagged film, Gabourey Sidibe, Lee Daniels, Mo'Nique, Paula Patton, Push, Sapphire on January 26, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
ManWomanBoogie.
Posted in Nonfiction, tagged gender roles, matriarchy, single parents on January 23, 2009 | 13 Comments »
Can man be stronger, if a woman is there?
I would have to say yes.
Can woman make it without men being there?
She would have to be blessed.
– Q-Tip
For the first ten years of my life, I was raised in a matriarchy. I lived with my mother and her mother (or, intermittently, with [...]
A Meta-Workshop.
Posted in the Nine series (novel excerpts), tagged fiction-writing, inner monologue, self-critique on January 16, 2009 | 2 Comments »
An aside: Writing fiction is like slipping into a home and taking things— hushes, aromas, and laughter, for instance. Unless you’re good at it—like, acrobatic cat burglar good—you never quite know how to get in and you never escape unnoticed. Your presence is a loud and clanging reminder that you’ve inserted yourself into a space [...]
Considering the Neo-Mammy.
Posted in Nonfiction, PostBourgie, tagged mammy, neo-mammy, Taraji P. Henson, The Secret Life of Bees on January 9, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Yesterday, PostBourgie published my essay on the idea that Hollywood is slowly reconstructing its traditional archetype of the “Mammy,” to curious, problematic, and vaguely uncomfortable results:
Hmm. It isn’t often that Hollywood strives for any sense of honesty about what was really going on in the hearts and minds of black domestics, as they scrubbed floors [...]
Collapse.
Posted in the Nine series (novel excerpts), tagged baking disasters, bitterness, Grand Rapids, overlong courtships on January 7, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Five years ago, Nine baked a rainbow cake to impress Ahmir, who she’d been seeing for three years by then. Three years was, by far, the longest she’d made a relationship last. There’d been 22-year-old Levi when she was eighteen; he stuck around for a year. And when she was 21, there was Damon, who [...]
Welcome to 2009.
Posted in Uncategorized on January 5, 2009 | 6 Comments »
Hello, friends.
We’re already five days into the new year. Just two days ago, I was in Baltimore, happily spending the end of my winter break with my mother and grandmother. Now, it’s back to the frigidity and conservatism of Grand Rapids… not that there’s anything wrong with that. (:-/)
Classes began at Grand Valley today, though [...]
