If you were to ask me what the most quotable black movie of all time is, I’d say, without hesitation, Coming to America. So many of the movie’s phrases are iconic and are simply part of black pop culture at this point. When somebody’s hair looks especially fresh, it is customary to remark on the juices and berries…
The Washington, D.C. area has been hit particularly hard with the flu this season. At my daughter’s school, for instance, as many as 41 kids were out at one time. My boys’ school also felt like a ghost town on several separate days. All three of my children came down with the flu; my daughter had influenza B, and my…
“What do you call a black man in first class?” I asked the gate agent, as I stood first in the first-class line, so I could be first in first class. I like to be first in first class, so I can sit first and watch all the white people watching me, the black man in first class, sitting first.
The 1990s and early aughts were a good time for black movies. From Boyz n The Hood to Menace II Society to What’s Love Got To Do With It to sleeper classics like The Wood, almost every year we got several dope black movies that showed us some version of blackness that existed in our communities. In 1997, during my…
The Photograph, a new black love story starring Issa “Lookin’ Like a Bag of Money” Rae and Lakeith “Can I Measure Your Tree?” Stanfield, comes out in theaters nationwide on Friday, Feb. 14 (also known either as Valentine’s Day or “National I Don’t Celebrate That Commercialized Obligation of Love Day”). I had a chance…
Unless you belong to an arbitrarily specific religion that prays exclusively to Gayle King and/or Oprah Winfrey, neither of those women are gods. Which means that neither is infallible. And if, for instance, you allowed Gayle to borrow your last $20 and she refuses to pay you back, or you invited Oprah to a game night…
I’m one of those people who gets hung up on the little things in movies and television shows. Like, I’ll be sitting in a movie theater minding my business watching some varying level of black cinematic excellence set in 1980-whenever, and an era-specific song will come on to really give you a sense of time, and I’ll…
1. Wait, there are levels of ash? Yup!
Ghana has such a rich history and culture, one that makes it a prime gateway into connecting those in the diaspora to their West African roots. There was much to see, do, learn, and savor.
There are, according to my research, three grades of ash; each uncomfortable in its own way, but one a bit deeper and, um, ashier than the rest.
The first time I saw Kobe Bryant play live was at the McDonald’s All-American Basketball Game in 1996. The game was played in Pittsburgh that year, and I went to the Civic Arena downtown to watch it. I’d already had a relationship with the idea of him. He was the top high school basketball player in the country that…
There comes a point in every full-throated internet or in-person defense of Tyler Perry when the arguments begin to sound like justifications for Amazon—or, well, Avon Barksdale.
I am one of the disrespectful negroes who returned to Ghana and left the rest of you unsuspecting negroes back in triflin’, dumb, and dirty-ass America, and was admonished, defriended, blocked, and unfollowed by Damon because of it. While I didn’t intend for my social media feeds to add to anyone’s…
When I was 12 or 13 and living in Frankfurt, Germany, my parents loaded my siblings and me into the car and we drove about four hours south and east to a small-ish town in the Bavarian region that was the site of the first concentration camp opened in Nazi Germany: Dachau.
When I got married in October 2018, my wife and I broached the idea of going to Accra, Ghana, for our honeymoon. Now, this wasn’t a random “Let’s go to Africa!” ideation; I’d never been to the African continent in any of my travels and had wanted to go, and my wife grew up in Accra, eventually moving to the United…
I’d like to be one of those parents who can say that my kids have never heard me use profanity. But I can’t do that. In fact, if you live within a mile of my house, it is highly likely that if you have kids, they’ve heard me use profanity. Stepping on shit my kids leave to blend in, chameleon-like, on my multi-colored…
Any list of the pleasant surprises from the months of book-related touring, talks, events, and appearances in 2019 would include the week I spent in London in May. It was my first time in England—a place I never had any desire to visit. (I’ve seen Closer seven times, which I figured was enough London for me.)…
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