I am the American heartbreak – The rock on which Freedom Stumped its toe – The great mistake That Jamestown made Long ago. –Langston Hughes “You think it’s the hurricane? I think a dead man trying to tell a tale.” Curtis T., a homeless man, was being interviewed by the New Haven Independent about an…
From the Classroom to the Cell: A Deep History of Immigration and Mass Incarceration
Last Friday, Ta-Nehisi Coates closed his remarks on the case for reparations by saying that slavery isn’t a bump in the road of US history—it is the road. Prof. Kelly Lytle Hernández opened her talk, “Caged Birds: The Birth of Mexican Imprisonment in the United States,” with a similar metaphor that cuts to the quick…
Slutty by Association: Black Girls and the Burden of Sexuality
On Monday March 23rd, Little League World Series star Mo’Ne Davis was called a “slut” in a tweet sent out by Bloomsburg University first baseman Joey Casselberry. “Disney is making a movie about Mo’Ne Davis? WHAT A JOKE. That slut got rocked by Nevada.” The consequences of Casselberry’s comment came at him swiftly and mercilessly. In…
Watching the Tide: Jook Songs’ Spring Show
This past weekend, Jook Songs, Yale’s Asian American writing and performance group, put on an exquisite spring show called Tide. The pieces performed at Tide went beyond the conventions of poetry and actualized narratives and conversations on stage. The works were reminiscences about the lives of the writers and how they had been shaped by…
Protesting Police Brutality in New Haven
The most recent occurrence of misconduct by the New Haven Police Department (NHPD) was at the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade. Following the parade, a police officer was videotaped slamming down Teandrea Cornelius, a 15-year-old Black girl, face first into the ground while she was already handcuffed. The video of this incident has gone viral,…