All the Women in My Family Sing: Women Write the World: Essays on Equality, Justice, and Freedom

All the Women in My Family Sing: Women Write the World: Essays on Equality, Justice, and Freedom

All the Women in My Family Sing: Women Write the World: Essays on Equality, Justice, and Freedom

All the Women in My Family Sing: Women Write the World: Essays on Equality, Justice, and Freedom

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Overview

All the Women in My Family Sing is an anthology documenting the experiences of women of color at the dawn of the twenty-first century. It is a vital collection of prose and poetry whose topics range from the pressures of being the vice-president of a Fortune 500 Company, to escaping the killing fields of Cambodia, to the struggles inside immigration, identity, romance, and self-worth. These brief, trenchant essays capture the aspirations and wisdom of women of color as they exercise autonomy, creativity, and dignity and build bridges to heal the brokenness in today’s turbulent world. Sixty-nine authors — African American, Asian American, Chicana, Native American, Cameroonian, South African, Korean, LGBTQI — lend their voices to broaden cross-cultural understanding and to build bridges to each other’s histories and daily experiences of life. America Ferrera’s essay is from her powerful speech at the Women’s March in Washington D.C.; Natalie Baszile writes about her travels to Louisiana to research Queen Sugar and finding the “painful truths” her father experienced in the “belly of segregation;” Porochista Khakpour tells us what it is like to fly across America under the Muslim travel ban; Lalita Tademy writes about her transition from top executive at Sun Microsystems to NY Times bestselling author. This anthology is monumental and timely as human rights and justice are being challenged around the world. It is a watershed title, not only written, but produced entirely by women of color, including the publishing, editing, process management, book cover design, and promotions. Our vision is to empower underrepresented voices and to impact the world of publishing in America — particularly important in a time when 80% of people who work in publishing self-identify as white (as found recently in a study by Lee&Low Books, and reported on NPR).

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780997296228
Publisher: Nothing But the Truth Publishing, LLC
Publication date: 01/30/2018
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
File size: 429 KB
Age Range: 15 Years

About the Author

Natalie Baszile, whose best-selling novel Queen Sugar was adapted for Oprah’s TV channel by award-winning director, Ava Duvernay, writes of returning to Louisiana to research Queen Sugar and finding the “painful truths” her father experienced in the “belly of segregation.”

Kelly Woolfolk, an attorney who acted in Spike Lee’s School Daze before working in the legal department of Virgin Records & as counsel for a television production company, writes about her identity growing up with “good” hair, “piss-colored,” & accused of talking white. She now sees her son’s experience in Oakland in a private school with the cloud of oppression that killed Trayvon Martin & Tamir Rice.

Blaire Topash-Caldwell, a PhD student in the Department of Anthropology at U NM, writes about reclaiming Indigenous space after the history of trauma of boarding schools, the criminalization of traditional religions, the stealing of Indian children and other structural violence’s have alienated indigenous communities from healthy sociality.

Lalita Tademy, NY Times bestselling author of three historical novels, writes of being the first in her family to graduate college and eventually becoming VP and General Manager of Sun Microsystems. Leaving corporate life after 20 years to write a novel based on her Louisiana family, she was rejected 13 times before finding a publisher for Cane River, Oprah’s summer Book Pick in 2001, translated into 11 languages and San Francisco’s One City, One Book in 2007.

Michelle “Mush” Lee is a poet and educator, recipient of the New York Hip Hop Theater Festival’s Future Aesthetic Grant and Compasspoint’s Next Generation Leaders of Color Fellowship. She teaches in universities across the country and is on the Board of 826 Valencia, and a Senior Teaching Artist at Youth Speaks. Her poem, Stay, is a meditation on birthing & fighting to stay put when everything in you says run.

Mila Jam believes she has made the world a better place by not masquerading and choosing to live in her truth loving the boy people thought she was and the woman she is. An award-winning NYC nightlife recording artist, entertainer and CEO of the artist collective: THEJAMFAM, Mila toured in the hit Broadway musical RENT.

Want Chyi has an MFA in fiction from Arizona State University and was the International Fiction Editor of Hayden’s Ferry Review. She claims that the first time she went to a Punk concert as a sophomore in high school, she could forget she was not Asian enough, did not fit in, and was too small, too novel to be real to the 90% white town of Carmel, Indiana.

Rhonda Turpin’s home is Cleveland, Ohio, but she has been in prison since 2004, serving a 15-year sentence for a white collar, non-violent offense.  Murderers serve smaller sentences. Her essay, Prison Parenting, explains the increase of the female prison population of over 300% in the last decade. She wrote her first book at Alderson West Virginia Prison Camp, mentored by Martha Stewart who was in the same facility.

Marian Wright Edelman, famed founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund, lawyer, advocate for disadvantaged Americans, writes about her role models Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, whom she wears on medallions around her neck. Other role models Ella Baker and Jo Ann Robinson remind us “of a great heritage of strength, courage, faith, and belief in the equality of women and people of every color.”

Lisa Victoria Chapman Jones shares the frightening journey of her 18-month-old son’s two-year fight with leukemia. Jones, a Yale graduate with a MFA in film from NYU co-wrote three books with Spike Lee, all companion books to his films: Uplift the Race: The Construction of School Daze, Do the Right Thing, and Mo’ Better Blues. Her memoir is Good Girl in a Bad Dress.

Jennifer De Leon writes of her Guatemalan mother treating education like a religion in their household. De Leon is an author, editor, speaker, consultant, and creative writing instructor at Emerson College and GrubStreet Independent Creative Writing Center. She is the editor of Wise Latinas: Writers on Higher Education and much more.

Samina Ali suffered a seizure and hundreds of strokes while in labor and giving birth to her son Isham.  She writes of the two and a half years it took to recover. Ali is an American author and activist and serving curator of Muslima: Muslim Women’s Art and Voices, a global, virtual exhibition and co-founder of the American Muslim feminist organization Daughters of the Hajar. Her debut novel, Madras on Rainy Days was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award.

Alicia Garza reflects on Barack Obama’s final State of the Union address where she sat as the guest of Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA). She was disappointed he did not the inequities of wages for Black women, and no tribute for India Clarke, a black trans woman killed in Florida last year. Garza, an African American activist and editorial writer birthed the Black Lives Matter movement with Opal Tometi and Patrisse Cullors.

Porochista Khakpour is an Iranian American novelist, essayist and writer. Her personal essays in the New York Times reflect on her experiences. Her novels are: Sons and Other Flammable Objects and The Last Illusion. Khakpour’s essay is about Persian New Year, or Nowruz, is not a holiday Iranians take lightly as it is any thousands of years old with roots in ancient Indo-Persian culture.


Deborah Santana is an author, philanthropist, advocate for peace and social justice, and mother of three extremely loved children. Her first memoir, Space Between The Stars: My Journey to an Open Heart, was published in March 2005.

Ms. Santana founded Do A Little, a donor-advised fund at the San Francisco Foundation in 2008 that supports women and girls in the areas of health, education and happiness. She has received many awards, supports varied organizations, and has traveled widely, appreciative of her encounters with everyone from Nelson Mandela to young school girls in Kenya.

Ms. Santana believes life is to be lived with integrity, compassion and love. She tells her personal stories to share her strength and encourage others on the journey.

 


America Ferrera is an award-winning actress and producer who is perhaps best known for her breakthrough role as “Betty Suarez” on ABC’s hit comedy, Ugly Betty, for which she won a Golden Globe®, Emmy® and Screen Actors Guild Award®, as well as ALMA and Imagen Awards. Ferrera currently produces and stars in the NBC workplace comedy, Superstore, which was recently picked up for a third season. 

She recently Executive Produced Refinery 29’s Behind the Headlines and Only Girl.

In July 2016, America spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on behalf of women’s rights and immigration in support of Hillary Clinton.

Behind the scenes, America has started her own television and film production company, Take Fountain. 


Natalie Baszile, whose best-selling novel Queen Sugar was adapted for Oprah’s TV channel by award-winning director, Ava Duvernay, has a M.A. in Afro-American Studies from UCLA, and is a graduate of Warren Wilson College’s MFA Program for Writers where she was a Holden Minority Scholar. Queen Sugar was named one of the San Francisco Chronicles’ Best Books of 2014, was long-listed for the Crooks Corner Southern Book Prize, and nominated for an NAACP Image Award. She has had residencies at the Ragdale Foundation where she was awarded the Sylvia Clare Brown fellowship, Virginia Center for the Arts, and Hedgebrook

Lalita Tademy is The New York Times bestselling author of three historical novels. Her debut novel, Cane River, was Oprah’s Summer Book Pick in 2001 and was translated into 11 languages, and was San Francisco’s “One City, One Book” in 2007. She has been featured in People Magazine, O Magazine, More Magazine, Good Housekeeping, The Today Show, The Early Show, CNN, and The Oprah Winfrey Show. She has appeared as a speaker for the Library of Congress and National Book Festival, the California Governor’s Conference for Women, and African American Librarians. She is a San Francisco Library Laureate.


Porochista Khakpour is an Iranian American novelist, essayist and writer. She is a contributor of personal essays to The New York Times about her experiences as Iranian-American and Islamic popular culture, and also writes about popular culture and music in the United States. Her first novel, Sons and Other Flammable Objects (Grove/Atlantic) was published in September 2007. The lyrical dark comedy, centered on the aftermath of 9/11 and Iranian fathers and sons in Los Angeles and New York, was a New York Times Editor's Choice and was included on the Chicago Tribune's 2007 "Fall's Best" list. It won the 77th annual California Book Award prize in First Fiction. She has been longlisted for the 2008 Dylan Thomas Prize and shortlisted for the Saroyan Prize.

            Khakpour's second novel, The Last Illusion (Bloomsbury USA), was released on May 13, 2014.

            Khakpour currently teaches at Columbia University in New York as an Adjunct Faculty Member in the MFA program, the written arts department at Bard College, and at Fordham University as an Adjunct Faculty member.

 

  • Sons and Other Flammable Objects, Grove Press 2008, ISBN 978-0802143860
  • The Last Illusion, Bloomsbury USA 2014, ISBN 978-1620403044

Porochista Khakpour is a Writer in Residence at Bard College.


Mila Jam is an award winning NYC nightlife recording artist, entertainer and CEO of artist collective: THEJAMFAM (@thejamfam6). From touring internationally with the hit Broadway musical RENT to performing alongside Grammy award winning producer Mark Ronson (The Lilly Allen Show), Mila Jam has danced as guest performer for Jody Watley, Lady Kier (Deee-Lite) and the late James Brown. Mila Jam won Best music video (2013) for her single "Masters of the Universe" and Best Dance Entertainer of the year for “The New York City Nightlife GLAM” Awards.

  • Danced as guest performer for Jody Watley, Lady Kier (Deee-Lite), and the late James Brown.
  • Creator of YouTube sensation Britney Houston
  • 2015 NYC Nightlife Odyssey Award Breakthrough Artist
  • 2013 Best Music Video for her single "Masters of the Universe"
  • 2013 Best Dance Entertainer of the year for “The New York City Nightlife GLAM” Awards

Marian Wright Edelman is the founder and president of the Children's Defense Fund (CDF), and has been an advocate for disadvantaged Americans. Under her leadership, CDF has become the nation’s strongest voice for children and family rights.

  • Her CDF’s Action Council's Leave No Child Behind® mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities.
  • In 1963 First black woman admitted to the Mississippi Bar.
  • In 1968 Counseled the Poor People’s March that Martin Luther King, Jr. was organizing before his death.
  • The Measure of Our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours [Most popular book; “a book to turn lives around.” A compassionate message for parents trying to raise moral children], May 1993, Harper Perennial, ISBN: 9780060975463

Belva Davis is an American television and radio journalist and news anchor who has reported on the onset of the AIDS epidemic, the birth of the Black Panthers, and the assassination of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, and the terrorist attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Tanzania that first put Osama bin Laden on the FBI’s Most Wanted List. As the first black female television journalist in the West, she prompted a new focus and interested on uncovered topics. She is the winner of eight local Emmys and numerous awards, she is author of the memoir, Never in My Wildest Dreams.

  • 2008 Inducted to National Association of Black Journalist (NABJ) Hall of Fame
  • 8-time Emmy winner via Northern California chapter of the National Association of Television Arts and Sciences
  • 2004 International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF) Lifetime Achievement Award: Reporter and Anchor, American Women in Radio and Television

Samina Ali is an American author and activist, speaker and serving curator of Muslima: Muslim Womens Art and Voices, a global, virtual exhibition for the International Museum of Women (IMOW), now part of Global Fund for Women. She is the co-founder of American Muslim feminist organization Daughters of Hajar. Her debut novel, Madras on Rainy Days, was awarded the Priz Roman Etranger award from France and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award.[4] She is a blogger for The Huffington Post and Daily Beast.

 

  • Author: Madras on Rainy Days, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004, ISBN 9780374195625
  • Pearls Within: Empower Yourself To Make The Change, Panoma Press, October 2014, ISBN 978-1909623675

 

  • 2004: Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award in fiction
  • 2004: Best debut novel of the year by Poets & Writers Magazine cover feature Samina on the July/August 2004 issue
  • 2005: Prix du Premier Roman Etranger award
  • 2005: Finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award in fiction

Michelle “Mush” Lee is a poet and educator. She is the program director of Youth Speaks and has co-coordinated the annual Brave New Teachers Conference, the largest national convening of scholars and organizational leaders in the fields of youth development and literary arts education.

 

Mush Lee is the recipient of the New York Hip Hop Theater Festival’s “Future Aesthetic” Grant and Compasspoint’s “Next Generation Leaders of Color” Fellowship. Her storytelling has been featured at the National Asian American Theater Festival, Girlfest Hawai’i, National Conference of Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education (NCORE), KFPA’s HardKnock Radio, Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Festival, HBO’s Russell Simons Presents: Def Poetry Jam (Season 6), as well as First Friday, a feature-length documentary film about Oakland’s monthly art crawl of the same name.

  • She has served as a panelist at conferences focused on issues of social justice, youth development and youth-centered movement building
  • Known as an art activist, educational practitioner, and fierce mother.
  • 2015 CompassPoint’s “Next Generation Leaders of Color” Fellowship
  • 2008 New York Hip Hop Theater Festival “Future Aesthetic” Artist Grant
  • 2004 National Collegiate Poetry Slam Individual Champion

Miriam Ching Yoon Louie is a Korean Chinese American writer whose works feature “kick-butt” heroines and their movements. A former member of the Third World Women’s Alliance, Louie co-founded Women of Color Resource Center and served as media coordinator for Asian Immigrant Women Advocates and Fuerza Unida. Her first novel was Not Contagious—Only Cancer. She devoted over three decades to advancing movements of women of color, immigrant women workers, and grassroots Asian communities.

  • UN 4th World Conference of Women, Women of Color Resource Center Delegation, Lead Organizer

Dr. Musimbi Kanyoro is President and CEO of Global Fund for Women. Born in Kenya, she is an activist for women and girls’ health and human rights and promotes the use of philanthropy and technology to drive social change. She holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Texas, Austin, and a doctorate in Feminist Theology from San Francisco Theological Seminary. In 2014, she was named one of the 21 women leaders for the 21st century by Women’s E-News. In 2015, Forbes magazine named her one of 10 women “power brands” working for gender equality.

    1999 – Human Rights Award

  • Introducing Feminist Cultural Hermeneutics: An African Perspective - October 2002, Pilgrim PR, ISBN: 9780829814996
  • Wonder Girls, Changing Our World: October 2017, powerHouse Books, ISBN: 9781576878224

Nashormeh Lindo

  • A world-renowned artist and educator.
  • From Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
  • She earned an M.S. in Education from the Bank Street College Graduate School of Education, and a B.A. in Art from Pennsylvania State University.
  • Works as a practicing visual artist/designer and as an educator/curator.
  • Teacher, program planner, curriculum development and educational training at such institutions as the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Oakland Museum of California. 
  • Lindo was appointed to the California Arts Council by Governor Jerry Brown.

Nayomi Munaweera:

 

  • Sri Lankan American writer and author who grew up in Nigeria and emigrated to the US in her early teens.
  • Munaweera holds a Bachelor's degree in Literature from the University of California, Irvine and a master's degree in South Asian Literature from the University of California, Riverside.
  • Debut novel, Island of a Thousand Mirrors was originally released in Asia where it was long-listed for the Man Asia Literary Prize and the Dublin IMPAC Prize.
  • Won the Commonwealth Regional Prize for Asia and was short-listed for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature.
  • Released in America by St Martin’s Press in 2014 and has been praised in reviews extensively, including The New York Times Book Review, which declared it “luminous.”
  • Lives in Oakland and is at work on her third novel.

 

  • Shortlist Northern California Book Award- Fiction 2015
  • Shortlist DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2014
  • Longlist Dublin IMPAC Award 2014
  • Commonwealth Regional Prize Winner- Asia 2013

Jennifer De Leon is an author, editor, speaker, consultant, and creative writing instructor at Emerson College, GrubStreet Independent Creative Writing Center, and elsewhere who lives in Boston. She is the editor of Wise Latinas: Writers on Higher Education, and the 2015–2016 Writer-in-Residence at the Boston Public Library. She is using her office space in the Boston Public Library and stipend to work on her Young Adult novel, Don't Ask Me Where I'm From. Jennifer’s short story, “Home Movie,” originally published in The Briar Cliff Review, was also chosen as the 2015 One City, One Story pick as part of the Boston Book Festival. Her public speaking centers on issues of diversity, college access, and the power of story.

 

  • Wise Latinas: Writers on Higher Education, University of Nebraska Press, 2014, ISBN 978-0803245938

Jennifer De Leon is a Creative Writing instructor at Emerson College.


Blaire Topash-Caldwell is an enrolled member of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians (Pokégnek Bodéwadmik). She is a PhD student in the Department of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico working on her dissertation about how natural resource management policy affects tribes in the Great Lakes area. She is a jingle dress dancer (a traditional healing dance originating from the Great Lakes area) and artist. Topash-Caldwell is an advocate for Indigenous issues within and outside of academia.

 

  • Aug 2016: Engaged Pedagogy Graduate Research Fellowship

 

  • Shortlist Northern California Book Award- Fiction 2015
  • Shortlist DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2014
  • Longlist Dublin IMPAC Award 2014
  • Commonwealth Regional Prize Winner- Asia 2013

Blaire Topash-Caldwell is a Ph.D Student at The University of New Mexico.


Phiroozeh Petigara is a writer and educator based in Oakland. Her work appears in Good Girls Marry Doctors: South Asian Daughters on Obedience and Rebellion, Yoga International, and VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. She teaches a variety of classes to older adults, including creative nonfiction, Bollywood dance, yoga and meditation. She is currently working on her memoir. Read more at bharosa.co.


Veronica Kugler sits on the WICE Board and is a member of the Executive Committee and the Optimization Team, established in 2014 to create strategies to achieve WICE’s business goals. She is a resident of and repeat participant in the Paris Writers’ Workshop. Veronica has a business and marketing background and worked for telecommunications companies, such as Pacific Bell, in the United States and France. She is a graduate of the UC Berkeley, with degrees in Political Economy of Industrial Societies and French. Veronica has been a resident of Paris since 2010.


Emma McElvaney Talbott is a former CJ Forum Fellow, a freelance writer, poet and educator who resides in Louisville, KY. She taught school in Jefferson County, KY, for 26 years and writes editorials and book reviews for the Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY). She is author of The Joy and Challenge of Raising African American Children.

 

  • The Joy and Challenge of Raising African American Children: River City Pub, 1996, ISBN 978-1881320791

Emma Talbott is formerly an adjunct professor at the University of Louisville, Clark-Atlanta University and Spalding University.

 

 


Lisa A. Jones is a former network news producer and television documentarian who is writing a memoir about her decade-long journey successfully tackling her young son’s life-threatening illness, including his bone marrow transplant. Her forthcoming book poignantly tells her family’s unique story and examines the resiliency of children, the importance of finding support during adversity, and the many ways that community can grow stronger by reaching out to help another family’s plight. Drawing on her personal journals and her years as a story-teller and a producer for FRONTLINE, ABC News and Blackside, Jones identifies universal lessons in finding joy even in precarious life situations, raising strong and compassionate children, coping with fear, and channeling positive energy as a necessity when confronting formidable obstacles. Jones is also a graduate of Yale and Harvard’s Kennedy School. 

 

With the lives of her son, daughter and husband finally stabilized, Jones was able to fulfill her dream of being a senior executive in the Obama Administration, and served as the Assistant Administrator for Communications for the Federal Aviation Administration from 2016-2017. She lives with her family in the Boston area.


Meera Bowman-Johnson is a wife, mother, and writer as well as former editorial art director turned columnist and blog author. A hipper Claire Huxtable with a penchant for sushi and vintage handbags who writes about parenting, health, travel and fine living. She blogs about the place where parenting, pop-culture and politics collide—in other words, “my everyday life.”

  • Known for her straightforward pieces for lifestyle and travel publications as well as tongue-in-cheek, satirical blog posts.
  • Media Client List (number of assignments in the last two years): Anti-Racist Parent, Mommy Too! Magazine, Racialicious, Wired Berries
  • A. cum laude from Spelman College

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

 

Foreword by Deborah Santana                                                                                           2

Introduction                                                                                                                                      4

 

Editing Identity:

Women of Color and Identity on Cultural Identity, Gender and Sexuality                   10

 

Samina Ali  Labor of Love                                                                                          12

Eliana Ramage — Indian Territory                                                                              18

Camille Hayes – Zebra                                                                                                20

Randi Bryant-Agenbroad – The Bad Black                                                                 22

Shyla Margaret Machanda – The Colour of Transparency                                          24

Sophia Remolde – Freeing My Seoul                                                             26

La Rhonda Crosby-Johnson – From Negro to Black                                                  28

Ugochi Egonu — African in America                                                                         30

Janine Shiota – AWOL WOC                                                                                     34

Mila Jam – Home: A Transgender Journey                                                                36

 

At Home in the World:                                                                                                        

Women of Color on Immigration, Migration and the Idea of Home                              39

           

            America Ferrera — All-American                                                                               40

            Blaire Topash-Caldwell —  Reclaiming Indigenous Space                                         45

            Sara Marchant – Proof of Blood                                                                                 47

            Fabiana Monteiro — The Perfect Life                                                             50

            Shizue Seigel – Swimming in the New Normal                                                          54

            Tammy Thea – Escape from The Cambodian Killing Fields                           60

            Phiroozeh Romer – This is How You Do in Karachi                                     63

            Sridevi Ramanathan – Truth Be Told                                                              66

            Sara Marchant – Proof of Blood                                                                                 69

            Porochista Khakpour  – Why Persian New Year Is Different                        72

 

Trailblazers, Hellraisers & Stargazers:

Women of Color Talk Careers, Work and Worth                                                            77

           

Marian Wright Edelman — The Tireless Indispensable                                              78

            Belva Davis – What it Takes: A Letter To My Granddaughter                                   82

            Deborah J McDuffie – Forever, For Always, For Luther                                           84

            K E Garland – You’re Hired                                                                                       87

            Kelly Woolfolk – Finding Home                                                                                90

            Lalita Tademy – Willie Dee                                                                                         93

            Charina Lumley — The Payat Paradox                                                                       96

            Want Chyi – Asian American Punk                                                                            98

            Kristala Jones Prather  –  Dreams of MIT                                                                  101                                                                                                              

 

With Liberty and Justice for All:

Women of Color on the Struggle for Social Justice and Equality                                    106

 

            Alicia Garza — State of the Union                                                                              107

            Hope Wabuke — What Is Said                                                                                   112

            Menen Hailu — Invisible Women                                                                              115

            Wanda Holland Greene – A Hairy Situation                                                               118

            Sugi Ganeshanathan – Whale Country                                                                        122

            Intisar Rabb — Sharia Law and the Civil Rights Movement                                      128

In a Family Way:

Women of Color on Family & Friendship                                                                          133

 

Jennifer de Leon — A Pink Dress                                                                              134

Jaime Leon Lin-Yu — Offerings                                                                                139

Tara Dorabji – A Note to the Boy Who Was My Son                                                142

Miriam Ching Yoon Louie – Beloved Halmoni                                                          144

Ethel Morgan Smith – The Problem with Evolving                                                    146

Marti Paschal – A Photograph of Martin                                                                    150

Vicki L. Ward – An Exceptional Father                                                                      153

Meilan Carter-Gilkey – A Motherhood Journey                                                         156

Maria Ramos-Chertok — Look Where You’re Living                                               160

Nuris Terrero – A Letter to my Son                                                                            163

Rhonda Turpin – Prison Parenting                                                                              166

Soniah Kamal – Scolding Other People’s Kids                                                          168

Nayomi Munaweera – Thoughts on Mother’s Day                                                    171

 

But Beautiful…

Women of Color Address and Redress the Beauty Myth                                                178

 

Nari Kirk – Doppelganger Dreams                                                                             180

Mercy L. Tullis-Bukhari – Black Dolls for Everyone                                                 185

Emma Talbott  –  The Gift of Hair, The Gift of Joy                                                    188

Maroula Blades – Touch-and-Go                                                                                191

Charmaine Marie Branch--Stumbling Into Beauty                                                      194

Dera R. Williams – Not Shirley Temple Curls                                                            196                  Nira Hyman  – New Year’s Day                                                                                200

Tere Romo  –  Re-Searching for a Truly American Art                                              203





Meet, Stay, Love:

Women of Color Talk Sex, Romance and Sexuality                                                         205

           

            Michelle “Mush” Lee – stay                                                                                        210

            Lucreshia Grant — Phone Sex Operator                                                                     212     

            Tameka Norris —One Artist’s Way                                                                           214

            Veronica Kugler — The Tunnel                                                                                  216

 

The Cure for What Ails You:

     Women of Color Transcending Illness and Trauma                                                   217

 

            Meera Bowman-Johnson— Pressing Pause                                                              218

            Kristin Leavy Miller – A Kid Like Mine                                                                    224

            Nikki Abramson  –  Invisibility                                                                                  227

            Kira Allen - On Learning to Thrive                                                                             230

            Jordan Johnson – The Black Sickness                                                                        232

            Lisa Jones — Nicholas                                                                                               235

 

A Woman's Journey is Never Done:

Women of Color on Traveling Far, Wide and Deep                                                          243

 

Yessenia Funes – What’s Left in La Quebrada                                                           244

Nashormeh Lindo- From the Middle Room to the Mountains: The Artist Within      250

Jessica Rodriguez – From Crack to Condos                                                               253

Rita Roberts-Turner – When Life is a Crystal Stair                                                     256

Robtel Neajai Pailey – In a World Obsessed With a Passport                                     258

Denise Diaab – The Road to El Camino                                                                      260

Roshila Nair - Small Places                                                                                         265

 

Contributors’ Biographies                                                                                                   270

 

Endnotes                                                                                                                                275

 

 

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