I was sitting in my office one evening, getting some work done before I left for the day. A student happened to pass by my door and stopped to talk about my office artwork and decoration. I had never met or seen this student before. He rightly assumed that I did work related to African American and African Diasporan cultures. I was curious about his interests and became even more curious when I heard he wanted to teach English overseas, especially in the Middle East.
I began to tell this young man about a friend of mine, a rather radical Black studies scholar, who is currently teaching in the Middle East. The young man grew excited by this example and began to talk excitedly about his dreams of teaching The Great Gatsby to people in Palestine. It was difficult for me to listen to much of what he had to say after that, all about his civilizing mission, all about how he could get Palestinians to understand themselves better with his hit list of white male authors. Continue reading
This fall, I taught a writing class where I introduced students to 
Many already know that my mother lives with me now. After she lost her job in the recession crunch, I had to do some financial wizardry and move her from Ohio to Brooklyn and become a new head-of-household of sorts (I have always been able to make a dollah outta 15cents but this took a little EXtra creativity). As I get older, I realize that most of us daughters will be facing similar circumstances in caring for aging parents. My mother, however, does not consider herself aging so we go to a Jazz Brunch/Bar in Manhattan every Mother’s Day and by Jazz, I mean a real quartet that does covers like “All Blues” from Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue, NOT that Kenny-G-Twinkle-Twinkle foolishness. It has only been in the last few years that I have even been in the same city as my mother on Mother’s Day so I figure we may as well go all out (which, for my mother, also means eating my dessert.)
