blackgirl on mars: notes on a life in copenhagen (or how my alienation brings me closer to people).

Sean Waterman is a decent surprise. Oh, and he's from Brooklyn.

The other day at work, a colleague’s wife visited with their newborn daughter. The little girl, just 14 weeks old, reminded me of the preciousness of life anew. The new mother held her daughter lovingly in her arms and all exclaimed how truly beautiful this baby is. The mother, from Gambia, was that deep dark perfection of black. “When she grows up,” the new mother said, “she will look like you. Her hair will be long like yours, and her skin just as light. She’s a mulat, just like you.” After I recovered from my immediate cringe at the term still in use here in Denmark for biracial children, I realized that there was yet one more aspect of this conversation that I needed to wrap my head around. I immediately corrected her on my racial background: I am not biracial. I felt I had to say something because I have experienced, one too many times, for example, being targeted by a group of African girls, who jeered at me, calling me mulat , or white Danes who assumed the same, but u...

Congratulations! There has been a winner for the Black Girl On Mars’ Bandit Queen Press – the story behind the press and your chance to win a book by B.W.I.E™ ! BGOM, Bandit Queen Press wishes you again, congratulations! Your BQP publication is on the way! Here is the winning answer to the following question: Has poetry changed your life? If so, how? Poetry has changed my life in simple ways, but it has been reflected in my entire life. Poetry makes you think as you try to figure out what exactly the author is referring to and how you judge and evaluate the words are often an expression of your life experiences. Poetry makes you think of others and gives you an insight into yourself. As a child I was selected to read a poem in front of my school and from then I was often selected to read at various functions, till I read a poem in front of the president of my island country. I had always loved reading from young. By the time I was 10, I had even read my Mom's Complete Works of Shak...

I received a very troubling email today. The title of the essay, Blacks Don't Read, was provocative enough to make even the most illiterate of us pay attention. I read the article and googled the name "Dee Lee" and this is what I found: Regarding the article that is circulating on the Internet, "Blacks Don’t Read", I did not author nor did I read the article in question on the radio. Dr Arthur Lewin of the Black and Hispanics Studies Department at Bernard M. Baruch College of the City University of New York edited this article many years ago and sent it out to a few friends. It has now been around the world. You can reach him at arthur.lewin@baruch.cuny.edu Another Dee Lee supposedly read the article on a Philadelphia radio station during his radio show. Someone along the way found my name and picture on the Internet and added it to the e-mail. This article has been circulating on the Internet for over eight years and over the years many things have been added ...

I recommend this film. Highly.

Denmark to Be Led by Its First Female Premier as Leftists Win highlights from the NYTimes article: One feature of the decade-long rule of the center-right parties that seemed unlikely to change significantly was the tight new restraints on immigration, which have most heavily affected Denmark’s population of about 200,000 Muslims, many of them asylum seekers. With Muslims now accounting for nearly 4 percent of the population, according to the United States State Department, and Islam now the largest non-Christian denomination in the country, opinion polls have shown strong support for the controls, which Ms. Thorning-Schmidt said any government she led would maintain. The anti-immigration Danish People’s Party, which formed the third-largest bloc in the previous Parliament, won 22 seats, down 3 seats from 2007. It will become an opposition party, and Pia Kjaersgaard, the party’s leader, said it would oppose any relaxation of immigration controls. The party successfully pushed for Denma...

thanks to Fresh Kulture 2 for this...

umh, this album saved me in the 90s. I woke up this morning singing this. Enjoy your day!

photo credit: Bob van Lindt “In the old days, I was overlooked. Now I’m looking it over.” Leonard Rosenfeld 1926-2009 "Don't step on the snail, because it will die!" The young mother exclaimed. "What is that?" asked the three-year old girl, looking up at her mother, eyes wide with curiosity. "It's a snail and if you step on it, it will die!" The mother was upset because her daughter had just stepped on a snail, killing it. "Yes, but mommy, what is that?" The girl continued, imploring her mother. "It's a snail. And when you step on it, it dies." The mother was heartbroken that her daughter had inadvertently ended a life. "Die, mommy. What is that? What is die?" I overheard this conversation the other day, on the way home. I recognized the stress in the mother's voice, the despair that the snail's death had unleashed. Some may think that the mother overreacted, but I recognized that bottled-up stress that rai...

God is a Capitalist Like trees and stars, I’ve been thinking about money. Like trees and stars (and even my very existence) I don’t know who invented money. I started asking this question, and realized like the purpose of Life, no one knew the answer. I ask you to do one simple exercise now. I want you go back and actually experience the time, in your childhood, you became aware of a few things. I’ll take you back to mine to get you started. When I was a child and I saw pictures of children starving, I couldn’t understand it. I asked my mother why these children didn’t have enough to eat, and she answered drought. My mother, and my father were not newspaper folk, and received their information via Jehovah Witness magazines and television. I couldn’t understand how we could have a world where people died because they did not have food or money to buy food. It was in moments such as these, as a child, that I realized, grown ups got it all wrong. But what happened to me is this. What ha...