🌊                                                                                                                  for the people below the surface trying to emerge[i] doing something illicit in secret with a public view[ii] things happening below the surface because they can’t happen above the surface can’t appear above the surface so make a difference below the surface community can’t happen above the surface so you bring community together below the surface doing something illicit…

Part of my coming to terms with myself is understanding what motivates me to get involved in movements. It is a kind of possession that takes place, much like what I have witnessed in my spiritual practice. This piece explores the three women who shaped my spiritual consciousness and how their engagement with their own divinity continues to affect and…

Mi wang Ingi meisje, en Mi wang Blaka meisje Je kan het niet van mij verwijderen I am a Native girl, and I am a Black girl You cannot take that from me * Our two small feet speed across the white, hot sand. Countless times, our feet had become the home of tiny worms. We grimaced as a swollen…

The first time she went to church, she was a dewy six years old. Her grandmother wanting her safe and protected, in the tradition of many Jamaican matriarchs, believed the sooner her spirituality was developed the better her life would be. Grandma did not have much to give her, but she could make sure that for church she was clean…

It was in Canada, our home [on] Native land,[i] a white settler colony, that I realized I was Black, a process that developed over time spatially and temporally. Indeed, the journey to the “here and now” is marked by multiple migrations from Jamaica to Canada and then to the United States of America. Both forms of mobility set the stage…

In New York, I feel naked without eyeliner. I wear fake glasses during my distance learning classes, and sunglasses when I go for walks. It is brief, but necessary. The trueness of my color belongs only to me. My partner asks me why I am so beautiful. I can never answer her, though I know it is love. The spots…

Every morning, I wake up silently. Eyes dry. Already angry. Disappointed by the air in my lungs. I think I’m mad at the world. But I’m not. The world spins as it always has, indifferent to the suffering of all but the wealthiest people. I’m angry because I’ve woken up with someone who will spend the next 18 hours trying…

I was an ugly girl. Mainly, I agreed I was one because I didn’t believe people lied about ugly.  People might lie and tell you that you look good, or they make like you enough that this colors their vision of you and thus, renders you pretty to them.  But people usually call ugly as they see it fit to…

I met my niece, my only sister’s daughter on January 18th. She was three going on four months. I took in her tiny toes, and fingers, her facial features and wondered who she resembled most. I saw my sister’s eyes and her father’s nose, my mother’s lips and my dad’s ears. As I looked at her I whispered, “aunty has…

Tonight was the night – 10:13pm my cell phone showed. In just a few minutes, my partner Alison and I were going to meet an “animator” who would take us to meet the “ladies.” Standing by a corner in an infamous “red light district” area in Barbados, my palms were sweating and my heart raced. I looked at Ali every…

I know what sisterhood feels like, but I am not talking about what siblings should share. This is something deeper because it is a connection that exists among women regardless of biological relations. “Blood thicker than water,” they say in Belize, but sisterhood like this sometimes actually exemplifies what those who share DNA should have. It is that kind of…