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 […]
Author: Mako Fitts Ward
Dr. Mako Fitts Ward is Clinical Assistant Professor and Faculty Lead of African and African American Studies in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. She is the co-founder of "Women Who Rock," a digital archive project at the University of Washington and collective of musicians, media-makers, performers, artists, scholars and activists committed to documenting the role of women in popular music and the formation of cultural scenes and social justice movements. Ward has published essays on body ethics and aesthetics among women of color, media and gender images, women in hip-hop, gentrification and cultural displacement, and Black women’s social movement organizing in the early 20th century.
Can Tyler Perry Pull Off a Black Feminist Masterpiece?
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 […]
Where Do We Go From bell?
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 […]
Police Violence is a Feminist Issue
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 […]
Marquette Retracts Job Offer to Lesbian-Feminist Sociologist
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 […]