Race
Africa is a Continent, the United States of America is a Nation, but Blackness is My World
“African” and “American” do not define me. The words “African” and “American” seemed to be at war with one another. When I became a teenager, I started referring to myself as Black. Not African American, not Black American, just Black. To be Black is to be my own creation.
Sandwich Expert David Brooks Weighs In On the Education of Black and Brown Children
Elitist sandwich expert and NYTimes columnist David Brooks writes that the desire of public school teachers not to die of covid is a disaster for children. Myriam Gurba disagrees.
Sylvie’s Love is Pretty as a Picture
Sylvie's Love relegates whiteness to its rightful place: This isn't Harlem gentrified by our concepts of unity twenty years into the 21st century.
Hilaria Baldwin & the Perverse Myth of Reverse Body-Shaming
Eating while beautiful isn't heroic. Neither is rubbing glitter into your butt's stretchmarks: Myriam Gurba on the weaponization of body positivity by Hilaria Baldwin and others.
When You Can’t Claim It, But You Can’t Escape It
Revisiting one of our favorite pieces from Tasteful Rude: “Are you Black?” my first crush, a white boy, asked me as we played together in the sandbox at school. I wasn’t sure. I thought of my nickname “negrita” but I didn’t know how to explain that I’m the darkest in my family or why it seemed perfectly natural to be identified by my pigmentation. When I couldn’t answer, he ran away from me.
