This imagined town in North Carolina, where all of Kenan’s stories take place, is home to preachers, farmers, Black and white people, the rich and poor. In this town lives a queer Black boy, Horace Cross, whose life is being shrunk by the social boundaries delimiting his desire, the same machinations of shame and disregard that turn many young Black queer people into ghosts of themselves.

I’m getting ready for the function at the junction And baby you’d better come on right now Because everybody’s gonna be there We got people comin’ from everywhere – “Function At The Junction,” Shorty Long, 1966 There’s a long, long legacy of Black folks gathering around food and funk, bbq sauce and song. Before we […]

I first did mushrooms with a green-haired mermaid. It was Halloween, we were at an off campus party, and the sea creature invited me to climb into the back of her Bronco with these magic words: “I love your work.” By “work,” she meant the diary entries I posted online, which were mostly about cigarettes […]

Raffy’s was the bodega directly across the street from our Brooklyn apartment, and up through high school, I was certain that it had everything I could ever need in life, from candy and laundry starch to the latest neighborhood gossip. Raffy’s was where, on a Saturday afternoon, I heard that the Guyanese girl in 4C got pregnant.

Each evil woman’s origin story is seemingly unique, but Maleficients and Medusas all too often begin as victims. These characters struggle to obey, to fit in, to be respected and taken seriously, though their efforts are for nought. Their foes point to some physical attribute, an aspect of their temperament, or a pariah status to justify keeping them down.

Through personal narrative, journalist, survivor, and activist Shiori Ito examines rape culture in Japan.

Nigerian President Buhari's banning of Twitter terrifies populace, disrupts activism, impacts the economy, and indicates a dangerous future. Disregard for such consequences is characteristic of Buhari's administration.

Mala Muñoz is without a doubt a Chicana who smokes her fair share of weed.

The most interesting mystery novels don’t announce themselves as such. There is no murder to solve or culprit to apprehend. Rather, events which have no obvious explanation unfold and an air of ambiguity surrounds them. Kiese Laymon’s novel Long Division belongs to this category of mystery.

We desperately need documentaries to help us understand how Trump won the 2016 election. Not only does The Accidental President fail to perform this type of analysis, but the movie also stymies it, giving those who participated in the grooming and installation of pro-fascist leader a platform from which to manipulate history.

Executive Order challenges viewers to re-think the post-apocalyptic format and hero-making narratives, flipping the script on a genre that has long reinforced racism, centering Black humanity as a racist government lead by an evil Karen tries to force all Black people to repatriate to Africa as a form of reparations.

In this excerpt from Chris Rice’s hardboiled memoir, an artist dumps her boozehound bankrupt boyfriend, steals what is rightfully hers, herself, and retreats to Venice, California

I was embarrassed to admit I'd been sexually assaulted. It hadn’t really been anything, but it had been giving me nightmares, his lips forming the words, “Your mouth is saying no, but your body is saying yes.” I was someone who was very comfortable, very open, about her sexuality and having sex. Why would the way he acted make my skin crawl for so long after he did it?

What is gayness if it isn’t visible via purchases? What is safety if it isn’t sanctioned by the consumer state? Without Target gay gear, many celebrants would be left indistinguishable from the average heterosexual white dude.

After a gang unit stopped my 14 year old cousin for driving in a stolen hoopty, they took her to Eastlake Juvenile Hall and handed her over to a new abuser: a cop.

An older homegirl, a hood mom whom Desiree considered her mentor, announced, "I'm jumping you in."

As I settle into my pregnancy, I fantasize about the human I’m going to bring into the world. I picture a girl. Beautiful. Black. Freckled like her father. Myopic like me. When she is thirteen we will sit down and have the talk. Not about periods. Or boys. Or girls. Or bodies. Or pets. Or HBCUs. Or sex. But about getting a perm.

Myriam Gurba writes about her cousin Desiree, female gangsters, cholas, Mexican bad asses with big hair, and the criminalization of survivors.

When my uncle Claude eventually passes away, he'll leave behind an estate of remarkable wealth. He's the only one of my father's siblings that was able to retire before becoming eligible for AARP citizenship. It's remarkable for me to think that for most of my life I've known my uncle as a shady real estate investor rather than the cheerful supervisor at the Palo Alto Main Post Office.

I could go on and on about these collaborations, but I don’t have enough space here to describe how wonderfully, gloriously, and lovingly enthralling they are. There are poems about birth and the body, stories of misogyny at a university and of grappling with a miscarriage. These works explore heritage, family, gender, love, and in the case of the inimitable Diane Seuss, tits. Altogether, they typify the robust state of contemporary poetry.