It’s the last days of Black History Month, when non-Black people are encouraged, with varying degrees of success, to engage with and show curiosity toward Black people and our stories. And this engagement is a good thing. Still, it comes with complexities any mixed Black person will recognize — meaning…

Tuesday night was odd. My head felt wooshy when I turned it all the way left or right, but not when I did it just a bit. My shoulders ached. I found myself gazing at the kitchen sink, its stack of glasses and plates and the bits of food I’d…

There are so many Black men I love. My dad. My brother. Cousins and nephews. Friends and colleagues. Ancestors. Artists and philosophers I’ve never met but whose contributions are inimitable, indisputable (Jean-Michel Basquiat, John Coltrane, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.). The tone and shades of my love are varied. Sometimes…

When I was a kid (the 80s and 90s), dieting was en vogue. Intentional weight loss. Getting skinny. Finally losing the fat. Stopping the insanity. Hallelujah! There was no shame in it. If you were on a diet, you said so in public, proudly, and you made sure to use…

Notes on grief — I’ve been thinking about my memory lately. How it works and why it makes mistakes. Every once in a while, for example, I hear a truck coming up our hill that growls and chuffs in the same register and pitch as my dad’s old maroon Ford, that dented dinosaur, and…

I’ve been avoiding silence lately. More than usual. I’m becoming, or have already become, one of those people who leaves the television on for sound, who always has a podcast in her ears, who never drives without the radio. I don’t like this. It’s not how I think of myself…

I hope she sees a woman unafraid of the shadows — I believe in the adage you can’t be what you can’t see. So I make a point to let my daughter see these five things: My Body Unadorned Getting dressed, thin, wintry morning light slanting through the window and illuminating my freckles, stretch marks, a long scar, shapely unshaved legs…

I was recently asked to speak to a group of second and third-year law students studying the intersection of law and love. Yes, you read that right: law and love. Odd bedfellows! Until you dip below the surface. Here’s what I told them. I came to law school in 2008…

Oh, it’s that time of year again! So here is a PSA to remind you that when your Halloween decorations include hanging fake bodies from trees, please consider the extent to which they look like the scene of a lynching and how that might impact Black and brown families in…