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

It was a year ago on June 17th, 2015 when a lone gunman entered the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina and murdered nine, including the church's senior pastor state senator Clementa C. Pickney.  21 year-old Dylan Roof was the gunman who stated that he had hoped to spark a race war. Roof knew what he was doing when he targeted the oldest African Methodist church in the South, which has always been a bastion of resistance for African Americans starting with Denmark Vesey who it is said, was responsible for planning a thwarted rebellion against whites in order to gain freedom for he and his people. The plan would have included a trip to the Republic of Haiti, if all had gone well. According to Wiki  Vesey and five slaves were among the first group of men rapidly judged guilty by the secret proceedings of a city-appointed Court and condemned to death; they were executed by hanging on July 2, 1822. Vesey was about age 55. In later p...

Berlin chronicles. Am in Berlin as one of the writers on a Daad Fellowship.. This is one of the most prestigious fellowships in the world. Berlin is a city of bikes. I live in Charlottenburg. You don't see black people in Charlottenburg. Today I was out shopping on my bike. I came out of Peek and Somethingburg all excited because I am off to dar es salaam tonight to see my in -love. Anyway am busy rushing about. My gorgeous apartment is a mess. Anyway, I am walking as carelessly as usual heading to unlock my bike when i see her - a black woman looking at me. She says, " I saw you the other day, cycling carelessly, on Saturday we buried 4 Ghanians. They kill you just like that you are nothing to them. Me-you cant see me on bicycle - they are supposed to remain 4 metres from you, but they don't. They kill you. I don't need a degree to say she meant Germans. But I am careless, and Berlin is a city designed for careless people. Except her - and I suspect they are many ot...

  Maroon  | məˈro͞on |  noun a member of any of various  communities  in parts of the Caribbean who were  originally  descended from escaped slaves. In the 18th century Jamaican Maroons fought two wars against the British  settlers , both of which ended with  treaties  affirming the independence of the Maroons .-- The New Oxford American Dictionary What is it that you think about when you hear the word "maroon"? Is it the color? Is it as a verb - as in, 'to be marooned'? Abandoned? Or is it in the sense of creating safe spaces, amidst hostile territories in the way many captured Africans and their descendents did in Jamaica and other areas throughout the diaspora?  The fact remains, and we can never emphasize it enough, that the maroon is the only true popular hero of the Caribbean...an indisputable example of systematic opposition, of total refusal.   --Edouard Glissant Danish-Trinidadian artist Jea...

In trendy Silicon Valley, Priya has everything she needs—a loving husband, a career, and a home—but the one thing she wants most is the child she’s unable to have. In a Southern Indian village, Asha doesn’t have much—raising two children in a tiny hut, she and her husband can barely keep a tin roof over their heads—but she wants a better education for her gifted son. Pressured by her family, Asha reluctantly checks into the Happy Mothers House: a baby farm where she can rent her only asset—her womb—to a childless couple overseas. To the dismay of friends and family, Priya places her faith in a woman she’s never met to make her dreams of motherhood come true. Together, the two women discover the best and the worst that India’s rising surrogacy industry has to offer, bridging continents and cultures to bring a new life into the world—and renewed hope to each other.  --A House for Happy Mothers (AmazonPub, June 2016) I was a bit amused when my spring issues of The Virginia...