The joint rested on the corner of his unsmiling mouth. The unforgiving wind crept into my turtleneck, which I had paired with a thin leather jacket that was not designed for the January Parisian night air. I could barely feel it, so I didn’t care. The rum made me warm…

Joseph and I sat on my porch, waiting for his brother Michael to arrive with his truck. It had been a hot summer day, and the sweltering heat of the afternoon had slowly faded into an idle night breeze, beckoning the crickets and owls and raccoons and all the other…

“Do I not seem like I’m worth being treated like a woman?” — In July 2020, Megan thee Stallion accused fellow rapper Tory Lanez of shooting her in the foot, and absolute pandemonium broke out on Twitter. I could scarcely keep up with the flurry of tweets, some in support of her, others in support of her shooter, and still others treading the…

Your favorite celebrity is not your bestie. — I scrolled on Twitter mindlessly as I often do, rolling my eyes at this tweet, giggling at that tweet. Right as I was about to exit the app, I came across a tweet that made my jaw drop: “I wish Nicki would just die so people would finally respect her.”…

Charles stared down at his shiny gold-plated watch, doing it mostly for the benefit of the realtor standing in front of him with his arms crossed. While Ella was almost always late to anything of importance, it was nearing two thirty and he was getting more worried as the minutes…

Or has the institution of therapy been devoured by the cogs of capitalism? As 2022 rapidly approaches, so does my year-long anniversary of therapy. My therapist recently sent me an evaluation form, asking me how I felt about my mental health services, whether I was satisfied, and how she could…

I stood in the grass under the shadow of the gangling stone gray tower. The sun blinded my eyes as I stared up to the sky, waiting for the thick rope of kinky hair to unravel and thump against the side of the tower, my ladder. “Ranaé,” I called, my…

Recently, I visited my cousin Jimmy in Atlanta, and within my first day out at a local shopping center, I became quickly aware of the curvy shape of many of Atlanta’s women. Every so often, I would walk past a woman with a perfect, Coke-shaped body, complete with thick thighs…

Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs, Martin Luther King, Nicolaus Copernicus. Four very different men, with one thing in common. They were contrarians. Contrarians are known for going against the grain. They are society’s forces of change, constantly challenging tradition for unconventional thinking. They are admired for swimming against the current, for…