Why Samuel Beckett: A Black Writer’s Perspective
Studying Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett during junior year at UCLA was the final straw that pushed me towards mental and emotional exhaustion. I had overextended myself academically by taking too many classes during spring and summer quarters.
The House on Mango Street and a Garden in Watts
The House on Mango Street in a roundabout way helped me buy the garden in Watts. The garden wasn’t just the purple fountain grass and Mexican feather grass protected by weed fabric and surrounded by wood chips at the side of the house.
Creative Writing Meets Fashion Design
Last weekend, I had the pleasure of attending the 15th Annual Ankara Festival in Hollywood, CA for my third or fourth time. I enjoyed taking in the African fashion created by designers from Ethiopia, South Sudan, USA, Nigeria, Congo DR, Sierra Leone, and Cameroon.
Can I Really Pitch This Book? — Black Writers Weekend, Atlanta
I recently returned from Black Writers Weekend (Aug. 1-4, 2024) in Atlanta where I participated in their Pitch Fest. My biggest takeaway was that I needed to embody my logline – that one-sentence synopsis of my hybrid memoir that reveals the central conflict in the manuscript. Embody how, you might ask?
Kendrick Lamar, LA Street Culture, and Memoir Writing
During the week of the Kendrick Lamar Pop Out Concert scheduled for Juneteenth in Inglewood, I was busy reviewing my research on the history of Watts. Watts figures in the penultimate chapter of the hybrid memoir I am writing because I owned a home for five years – 2004 until 2009 –in that unincorporated area of Los Angeles.
Lost in Los Angeles
I center the beginning of my memoir on my feelings of alienation from Los Angeles during my youth. Given the reflective impulse of memoir, I now realize that one reason I felt alienated from my city of birth was because I didn’t know its hidden history.
A Dizzy-Tizzy Day at LA Festival of Books
I prepared well in advance for the Saturday book panel titled Politics and History: Roots of Black Resistance. Like last year, I purchased my tickets the night before…
Cop Brutality: @Memphis and Nigeria’s #EndSARS
MY MEMPHIS TRAUMA REVOLVES AROUND THE UNIVERSE OF WILEY BENTON WHO WAS ONE OF TWELVE CHLDREN BORN TO MY MATERNAL GREAT GRANDPARENTS, BUD AND LETTIE BERNETTE BENTON. THE BROTHER OF MY GRANDMOTHER, DOLLIE, A YOUNG WILEY LEFT HOME TO RUN AN ERRAND…
How to Do a Book Reading Like a Jazz Musician: On Fannie Lou Hamer
The book, Mama Fannie, evolved into a musical instrument as her daughter simultaneously read from the text and addressed the live audience…
Harriet Tubman, Twitter, and Freedom
After the murder of Nia Wilson, I’d chosen Tubman (for my profile pic) because as both a runaway and an abolitionist, she symbolized freedom…
