For almost a decade I had been living in Tokyo, Japan. With my wife Haruki and our seven-year-old daughter, Kantra we were on a 13-hour flight from Tokyo to JFK airport in New York City. It was the day before 9/11 and it was our first touchdown in the States. NYC was one of the global epicenters of COVID. At JFK we had to go through immigration and transfer to a connecting flight to Charlotte. Throughout the weeks leading up …
Category: Essays
Sorry for the long pause of posts. My daughter, Kantra was out of school and I’m working on some things that always get buried under writing assignments. Last month Huffpost published my personal article, “I’m Raising A Biracial Daughter In Japan, Where She’s Surrounded By Blackface.” I know I should’ve written a reaction to its reaction(s), but I had to counter the vertigo of retweets and likes. The world’s response was head-spinning. I had a TV reporter contact me about doing …
Malik Taylor aka Phife Dawg transitioned on March 22, 2016, from complications resulting from diabetes. His was 45 years-old. He was a husband, father, brother, and a member A Tribe Called Quest. Phife Dawg’s passing is a closing portal to my childhood. It was 1991 and I was a Orlando suburban kid, pimping my Afrocentric Cross Colours gear and big purple suede Karl Kani shorts. If it weren’t for my baggy clothes, I was so skinny that I could turn …
My wife is pregnant and I am becoming a father. It’s joy and terror; anticipation and anxiety. How can we afford a baby? Will I hold the baby right? Will I be a good father? My wife wonders if she’ll be a good mother? What will the baby look like? Is it a boy or a girl? A girl will be easier and cheaper. “We’ll just chain her to the bed, home school her, she’ll live with us forever, no …
Want to say “nigger” without taking the chance of getting beat the fuck up? Are you a white liberal tired of white guilt? Feeling a little transracial? Does everything about you seem black, but your skin? Do you sketch self-portraits using a brown crayon, instead of peach? Find yourself tweeting #blacklivesmatter, but still getting bussed to the #alllivesmatter side of town? What about that blackface frat party you always wanted to throw? Want to get shot for no reason? Can’t …
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