The bad news is you can’t escape the long arm of Madea in the new film For Colored Girls. Tyler Perry’s Madea, whose righteous indignation and compulsive moralizing are warped with tired tropes of Judeo-Christianism, provides the backdrop for interpreting the characters in his film version of the Ntozake Shange “choreopoem”. Phylicia Rashad’s character Gilda (a [...]
The mediasphere has been buzzing with skepticism since Variety announced over a year ago that Tyler Perry would write, direct and produce the adaptation of Ntozake Shange’s 1975 choreopoem For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf. The film is the first production for Perry’s 34th Street Films (a production division of [...]
Is it true that feminisms are everywhere? Are they really, as Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards suggest, “in the water”? Yes and yes. From music, film and literature to the online world of social networking and blogging, women are (and have been) creating kick-ass political analyses and social commentary on the intersection of oppressive social [...]
Recent stories of police violence are worrying. Working-class communities of color have worked for years to hold police accountable to protect and serve all citizens. But I often wonder whether the average patrol car on the street is there to protect me, or if it will transform into something like the Transformers Barricade Decepticon, whose [...]
Last Thursday night, Marquette University–a Jesuit Catholic institution in Milwaukee–retracted its offer to sociologist Jodi O’Brien to serve as dean of its College of Arts and Sciences. O’Brien, who is openly lesbian and feminist, is currently chair of the department of anthropology, sociology and social work at Seattle University and has published frequently on issues [...]
