As breast cancer awareness campaigns have become more visible, and the color pink has become emblematic of survivors and those who support their struggle, I interpret the omnipresent October color as a way to mobilize social consciousness, action and hope. As a woman, I am incredibly grateful to see our national embrace of an initiative [...]
Henrietta Lacks. The name meant nothing to me until I learned two years ago, at 29, that this Black woman had shaped and saved millions of lives–mine and yours included–without ever choosing to or knowing it. Furious that I had never encountered her story before, I was once again struck by the gaping absence, in [...]
As a Black feminist scholar, every February I find myself troubled by the ways that we simultaneously remember and forget women who look like me. Not that I’m satisfied with the memory of Black women every other month of the year but February–Black History Month–can be especially disappointing. I find myself wanting to rant to anyone within [...]
This past Saturday, while thousands of SlutWalkers took to the streets of New York, I attended my local SlutWalk, 840 miles away in Carbondale, Ill. I went to the anti-rape march not only because I am as a survivor of gender violence, a feminist and an anti-gender violence activist, but also because I was curious [...]
