by Eleanor Pritchett The little pink magic marker in my hand seems too light for the heaviness of the task in front of me. Draw a moment when you’ve felt unsafe. Suddenly I can’t think. This room in the New Haven Public Library full of young queer and trans* New Haveners is such a safe…
by Alexis Payne The Sapphire. The Mammy. The Jezebel. The Sapphire. The Mammy. The Jezebel….The media, like a broken record, plays this same, sad song again and again. It seems these are the only identities available for Black girls in America. In an industry dominated by white executives, white producers, and white writers, narratives that…
I saw Straight Outta Compton the day before I arrived on campus. Because of the sensationalist nature of social media, I had already been barraged with a plethora of opinions supporting and denigrating the film. Perhaps I entered the theater already biased. Nevertheless, when all was said and done, I left with conflicting emotions. I…
Each time that I hear a Yale student use the word “ratchet,” I die a little on the inside. They’re appropriating a word that has a specific and serious cultural context in Louisiana, where I’m from. The first time most Louisiana natives hear the word ratchet is not in a frat house, but in their…
At precisely seven o’clock Sunday night, the disembodied head of instructor Nicholas Charleston peers out from the screen at eight expectant students. Skype carries his voice from Oklahoma. Of those in attendance, six sit behind thick copies of A Dictionary of the Choctaw Language. Nearly all are Choctaw themselves. Dr. Angela Gleason, director of the…