Afrogeek Mom and Dad

Comics and the U.S. South

2011-12-08T16:21:00.001-05:00

Oh sad and neglected blog. Have no fear. Changes are under way.

In the mean time--check out the awesome cover of a new book on comics. I happen to have an essay in it.

It's edited by Brannon Costello and Qiana Whitted and can be pre-ordered here.

Things I Learned on My Trip to Charlotte

2011-07-22T14:55:00.000-04:00

Patrica Williams Lessane and I went on an overnight trip to Charlotte to the Harvey Gantt Center to see Marcia Jones talk about her pieces in the Live and In Stereo(type) exhibit. One of her images is below. I don't know if you can tell, but that's Michelle Obama's face on those million dollar bills.

In any case, here's what I learned:

Hardee's has a fried bologna breakfast biscuit. I didn't have one. I'm kind of amazed that it exists at all.
Charlotte is a big city, with skyscrapers and everything. I don't know what I was expecting, but I was pleasantly surprised. I had the same reaction when I went to Cincinatti in March. Clearly I need study up on my U.S. geography.
While I love being in a hotel so I can sleep in a bed without my children and my children's stuff, I still find it incredibly disorienting to wake up somewhere other than my own home.
You should definitely avoid hotels with a B rating. I swear they were shooting porn in the hotel where we stayed.
And, finally, the other artist in the exhibit was Fahamu Pecou. One of his images is below (it's called "Warn A Brother"). He wasn't at the talk, but I'm dying to meet him. He may be my soulmate. (Don't tell Brian.)

Throwing Out the Script

2011-07-18T14:32:00.001-04:00

There should be more stories about Cate on this blog. Not just because Cate is amazing in all sorts of ways that still surprise me, but also because hers is a happy life and more parents with kids who have Sensory Processing Disorder probably need to be told that.

At a birthday party recently I talked to another mom whose son just got a diagnosis that's different than Cate's (she has SPD), but whose therapies are similar (OT, social stories, among other things). I was struck in this conversation by two things. First, she had all the same concerns and questions and feelings that I had before and after Cate's diagnosis. I thought we had done something wrong (we didn't read enough to her in the womb, we should have put in her childcare earlier, we should have sung more songs), I didn't know whether I should tell people about her SPD, it continues to be difficult to explain to Frances why Cate has modified rules. We had a great talk about strategies for all those things.

I was also struck, though, by how much of our conversartion was about re-writing the story we had in our heads about our kids. We both have first daughters who are gorgeous and smart and outgoing and fabulous in all the ways you might want for your daughter. Those first daughters have done very little to challenge our notions of what it means to be a parent or what it means to be a member of human society. But these second kids--so many things we had planned, so many things we assumed to be true, so many things we took for granted are suddenly gone. We are having to write this new story as we go along.

It's been more than a year since Cate got her diagnosis and I find myself loving this task of writing a new story (though it's not without its anxieties) and also realzing that Frances' life should also be lived without a script. This mom just got her child's diagnosis and I sensed that she had a lot of grief about having to let go of her script and that it helped to find someone who understood how that felt. And who wasn't still grief-stricken about the process.

So maybe I'll share some more stories about Cate in all her awesome-ness and about Frances, who also continues to be amazing (even if she is moody all of the time now), and how life goes on, even off-script.

5 Things I Could Live Without In Romance Novels

2011-07-08T14:29:00.004-04:00

Before we begin: This is not an anti-romance post. I read lots of romance novels. I adore romantic comedies. I'm doing academic work on romances. I don't hate romance novels. I'm only saying these things because I care.

1. Stop with the Alpha Males
I know. Strong, successful, assertive, masculine (in the most traditional sense), serious--all these things are sexy. I tend to agree. You know what's not sexy? Arrogant, entitled, possessive, taciturn jerks. Romance writers, you've got to give me a reason to like the guy. Otherwise, I'm going to hate him and think the heroine's stupid for swooning over him.

2. Passive Heroines
I don't need my heroines to be Lara Croft traipsing all over the globe for treasure or Scarlet O'Hara making dresses out of curtains. I do need her, though, to do something other than think about the hero. Maybe it's just me, but I think great drama can from two together people with a lot going for them being suddenly confronted with having to make space for a partner. That kind of conflict can only happen, though, if the heroine is doing more than waiting for the hero to wander into her coffee shop.

3. Love at First Sight
Yes, it's romantic. But when you're writing category romance and you only have a couple of hundred pages to get the guy and the girl together, love at first sight reads as rushed and unbelievable. Maybe I've been reading too many category books lately, but I like romance that has seduction, where the two leads slowly fall, where they don't realize they're hooked until they're in too deep. Love at first sight takes some of the romance out of romance for me.

4. Occupations that make no sense
You can not be a 27 year old college professor with tenure and three award winning books. You just can't. You can't be 30 with an M.D. in psychiatry and a PhD in psychology, a thriving medical practice, and a thriving career as a self-help author. You just can't. You can't be a successful musician who spends no time practicing. Stop it.

5. Deep Dark Secrets That are Neither Deep nor Dark
Here is a good secret: at 17 you became pregnant with your boyfriend's baby. You find out this information right after the two of you have a big fight and break up. Instead of telling him about the baby, you have an abortion. After the abortion the two of you reconcile, but the weight of what you've done, the fear of how he might react if he finds out, keeps you from getting back together with him. You grow apart after the two of you go away to college. 15 years later you meet up again and the attraction is still there, but you can't pursue it unless you tell him your secret. You still don't how he will react, but you feel this relationship might be worth it.

I'd read that story.

You know what else is a good secret? The fact that you used to work as a professional escort. I'd read that story, too.

Bad secrets:

you gave up a dead man's baby for adoption 16 years ago--so what?
your ex-fiance killed your father and now he is after you--why haven't you called the police?
your dead father is an alcoholic--again, so what?

In other words--good secrets have the potential to have a serious negative effect on the central relationship of the story, that of the hero and heroine. Bad secrets are ones that would have no effect. If you promise me a deep dark secret, romance authors, you'd better deliver.

The Help, part 2

2011-06-08T23:47:00.000-04:00

I love all the comments, folks! I feel like I should say that I don't at all object to popular books. I write about comic books and romance novels for a living. My favorite thing about the new X-Men movie was how yummy Michael Fassbender looked (I'm linking because it seems gratuitous to to put his picture on the blog again--I can pause while you go look, though). So, I went into this book ready to be won over.

And here's the thing--if it had only been about the white women (what is up with Celia Foote? Will it be a good reveal? I'm fascinated by her? And I'm findind Hilly deliciously awful), the book would be bearable. Stockett writes well. I want to know what's going to happen to these women.

But it's not just about the white women. It's about the black women as well. And the biggest problem I'm having so far is (I'm about 6 or 7 chapters in) that these women, who are speaking to us from inside their heads, are speaking as if they are talking to white women. Aibileen calling Jackie O "Miss Jackie" inside her head, Minny needing Celia to act like the other white women--it's like Stockett hasn't given these black women any space outside of the gaze of their white employers. I don't feel like I'm getting to know them. I feel like I'm watching a performance for my benefit.

So, the verdict so far: I no longer want to gouge my eyes out, but they may fall out of my head from all the eyerolling. And, also, what does she say in the afterword? It's taking all the willpower I have not to skip ahead and look.

Really people? The Help?

2011-06-07T15:56:00.000-04:00

When I'm on a plane or at a party and people ask what I do and I reply, "I'm an English professor," I get one of two reactions: either the person will start apologizing for their grammar (it's too much trouble to tell people that I'm a lit professor and really couldn't care less about their grammar) or they will ask what I'm reading. For those of you who don't know English profs, let me clue you in a little secret: I'm rarely going to be reading anything you're remotely interested in. (Except lately I'm reading tons of romance novels, but that's a story for another day). The last two books I got excited about were What Was African American Literature? by Kenneth Warren (which was nonsense) and Pym, a novel by Mat Johnson (which was so so good, but probably only if you've also read Poe's Pym). I never get around to reading the "latest" novel until everyone has moved well past it, which brings me to today's topic: The Help.

I agreed to lead a book discussion on the The Help because I'd intended to read the book anyway and I love a good book discussion. One chapter in, though, and I want to gouge my eyes out. You want it not to revel in tired, uncomplicated, misleading stereotypes. But how can it do anything else when it includes these unironic lines:

Fact, [Miss Leefolt] whole body be so full a sharp knobs and corners, it's no wonder she can't soothe that baby. Babies like fat. Like to bury they face up in your armpit and go to sleep. They like big fat legs too. That I know.

And of course she knows because she's fat black woman who has raised 17 white children. Good lord, people, have we really not moved past this? Am I really reading a New York Times bestseller about a mammy?

To be fair, I've only read one chapter. Maybe it gets better.

Is there any such thing as geek street cred?

2011-06-06T14:57:00.000-04:00

One of the reasons it's been hard to keep up with th blog (besides, you know, the whole full-time job and two children) is that I often have way too many projects going on at once. Sometimes those projects result in all kinds of geeky awesomeness.

Today I have a post up at the Hooded Utilitarian blog on Race in the Comics Classroom
I have been cited (along with Alison) in a Wikipedia article on Joanna Russ
And, perhaps, coolest of all, Conversations with Octavia Butler was nominated for a Locus Award, which is kind of a big deal

If only any of this meant I got to spend my summer doing something other than driving children to and from various water- and sport-related events. Alas.

Go See X-Men: First Class

2011-06-04T21:26:00.000-04:00

So Brian, who is currently recovering from spinal surgery, does not take that fact as an excuse to miss a Marvel summer spectacle. A week or so after his surgery, he hobbled to the theater and we saw Thor and yesterday, after a doctor's appointment, he insisted we see X-Men: First Class instead of going home. We loved both films and the bar has been set pretty high for Captain America: The First Avenger coming out later this summer. (Note: Lest y'all think the only movies I see feature *gorgeous* men with superpowers, I've also seen Bridesmaids and Kung Fu Panda 2 in the last month. The former was hysterical; the latter was a video game commercial, albeit an entertaining one.)

The Good
Michael Fassbender as Magneto. Not only was he distractingly good looking, but his performance of a tortured survivor of a brutal concentration camp, not to mention his badassery in hunting down those who had tortured him, made his "kill all humans" philosophy completely sympathetic. Also, his chemistry with James McAvoy's Charles Xavier was outstanding and ~~a little~~ a lot hoyay.

Completely unrelated to the film was the trailer for Hugh Jackman's new movie Real Steel. Is it a sign of an unhealthy obsession with Jackman that I'm totally going to see this flick, which amounts to Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots: The Movie?

The Bad
Not really bad, but worth noting: I cared so little about the first class of X-Men, outside of Charles and Erik. Every time the story switched to the young recruits, I was eager to get back to the two friends destined to become enemies. They all did a fine job, but we were all there to see Professor X and Magneto.

The Ugly
The one glaring misstep in the movie was the character of Darwin. I won't spoil anyone who hasn't seen the movie, but considering this is a black blog and he is black character, you can imagine why I'm annoyed.

Still on the list to see this summer: Jumping the Broom, Winnie the Pooh, Captain America, Green Lantern, Harry Potter, Planet of the Apes (!), and probably some other stuff that doesn't involve superheroes or sci-fi.

Race at Spoleto (or, David Mamet is Full of It)

2011-06-01T23:22:00.001-04:00

I think I should preface the snark that follows with this: (1) It occurs to me that the only plays I've seen in Charleston have been at the College of Charleston, which is a very particular (and quite nice) theater-going experience. When you're in the Emmett Robinson, a guy comes out before the performance and tells you that the doors will be closed until intermission. No one comes in or out. If you leave at intermission and don't make it back before the door closes again, you're out of luck. (2) I really enjoyed Pure Theater's performance of Mamet's play Race. It's just that the experience was surreal.

So Morgan and I show up at 5:30 for the 6:00 performance of Race. We were surprised to find the theater in a strip mall next to East Bay Deli (Morgan would point out here that she felt like we were marching to our deaths, but she's prone to exaggeration). Because we were there so early, we got to observe some great theater even before the play started:

the theater itself was roughly the size of my bedroom, maybe a little bigger (but not by much). Morgan decided it used to be a check cashing place. Whatever it was in its former life, the building now serves as a really intimate theater experience.
the play's director greeted people at the door, lovely and warm and inviting, in the biggest summer straw hat I've ever seen. She seemed to be in love with this hat--she caressed it and took it off her head to look at it and showed it to other people. When she introduced the play, she took a moment to talk about the hat. Reading this over, it doesn't surround surreal. But trust me, it was.
Everyone in the theater seemed to know to bring something to drink. Nearly everyone had a bottle of water. Except for those people who had cups of wine. I kid you not. Cups of wine. Morgan and I spent a long time trying to figure out where this wine came from and how it was legal to carry it from wherever it came from into the theater.
The couple behind us were having a *horrible* vacation. The wife was annoyed at her hotel accomodations. She was hot. The play started 5 minutes late. She thought it was stupid. And her husband had no sympathy. I know all of this because she talked *through the entire play.* Morgan is convinced the guy next to us texted his mistress throughout the performance.
The couple in front of us, competing with Morgan and me for the "Youngest People in the Room" title, were clearly early in their relationship. She was definitely into the play and he clearly was expecting sex for his patience.
At one point a guy came from behind the stage with two boxes of leftover doughnuts, to toss them out. The director told him to keep them because once they get old, they get hard and shellack and you can use them as props. She said all of this while fondling her giant hat.
The same guy came out again with a ladder, climbed it and tapped on a ceiling tile a few times. He then took the ladder backstage and returned a second time with it and a flashlight. Under the guidance of three gentleman in the front row, he shined a light into the tile for a few minutes. Apparently the tapping worked.
The bathroom was behind the stage. Behind the stage!

The play itself was incredibly well-acted and entertaining. Liza Dye, who received this year's African American Studies Creative Expression Award, played the female lead. So any problem I have with it has nothing to do with the production and everything to do with the fact that David Mamet is full of shit. It's too much to get into here, but suffice it to say this: despite what Mamet seems to think, black people don't actually hate white people and it isn't at all unreasonable for a female junior partner at a law firm to refuse to put on a red sequined dress and play "the girl" in the reenactment of a sexual assault in court.

Two more Spoleto events to go.

Our Middle School Saga

2010-11-22T09:51:00.000-05:00

Frances is in search of a middle school, which means Brian and I have spent a lot of time in the last week touring middle schools all over Charleston County. So far we've only been to public schools. We're still in the process of determining if private school needs to play a role in our decision making. We have learned a few things though.

A new building makes a huge difference. Brian and I have a profound disagreement about the role aesthetics should/does play in one's feelings about a school. This may have something to do with the fact that Brian has really fond memories of his run down inner city public high school, while I really loved my small town, well-maintained, decidedly middle class public high school. Whatever the source of this difference of opinion, it is now clear that Brian believes"it's pretty" is an illegitimate reason to like a school.
Frances is full of opinions. This wasn't exactly a secret before (she's not really shy with her opinions), but it has been interesting to take her around schools and find that what she's thinking about is in many ways very different than what we're thinking about. it's also been interesting to note that she has opinions about stuff you'd think she wouldn't. At the single gender school we visited, the teachers kept telling us how good single-gender education is for girls because girls are more cooperative learners and are conditioned to be passive and without boys, girls can learn in peace. Frances' response to that was a complaint that with single-gender education you lose out on "learning opportunities" because you might be a girl who learns like a boy and if you're in classroom full of girls, then you're out of luck. Also, Frances says, people should realize that not all girls are alike.
Public schools are eager (*eager*) for involved parents and good students. Frances is a good student, an athlete, and a musician. Every place we've been to so far has treated her like some kind of superstar. The school that seems to have the smallest chance of getting her was the school that did the most to treat her like a superstar. I thought that showed some desperation on their part. Brian read it as dedication.
Eighth grade boys are big and should clearly be nowhere near my daughter.
Frances will probably ride the bus to middle school, which makes me cry a little. She will, however, get a cell phone (because the idea of her getting dropped off at the wrong stop or too early or some other catastrophe makes my stomach hurt), which makes her happy.
I'll be glad when this middle school saga is done.

I Blame Skittles

2010-11-04T09:15:00.000-04:00

I love candy. I really love it. And not fancy chocolates from exotic places or weird concoctions people discover on vacation. I love plain old grocery store checkout candy--Skittles, Gobstoppers, Twix, Airheads, KitKat. Apparently I am a 9 year old in disguise.

The consequence of this love (and living without health insurance for most of life, until I was old enough and gainfully employed enough to pay for my own) is that I have had, over the last few years, quite a few cavities. And yesterday I had an emergency root canal because in the middle of getting a cavity filled everything went wrong.

And here is what this post is really about--the endodontist I went to for the root canal was super nice and cute and friendly. And when I interrupted his explanation of what was about to happen to ask if there would be nitrous involved, he offered me instead two tiny glorious blue pills. He good-naturedly listened to me babble about how bright and shiny and space-agey his office is. And he was dutifully impressed that I am a college professor. As root canals go, it was terribly pleasant experience (though, truth be told, those blue pills mean that I remember very little of it).

Anti-Social Grump

2010-10-29T17:55:00.000-04:00

Morgan (a regular reader of the blog [though she never comments] who now owes me a shiny nickel) hinted that it has been some time since I updated. So here goes:

Shoe update: I didn't get new shoes (well not these shoes; I got other less expensive but equally cute shoes) with my royalty check. Instead, we bought camp chairs for soccer. Frances has played soccer now for five years (maybe six?) and we've always stood or sat on the grass throughout the game because I refused to buy chairs. In my mind it was a decadent expense (really, sitting on the ground is not going to kill you; it probably builds character). But free money suddenly appearing in my mailbox apparently signaled to the family that camp chairs were in order. Camp chairs instead of cute shoes: was there ever a clearer sign that I am somebody's mother?
Kid update: Here is where the anti-social grump comes in. Frances has reached an age where she doesn't really need or desire my presence when she plays outside. Consequently she spends hours (literally, from 1 until about 6 or 7) outside on the weekends doing lord knows what. She has made tons of new friends and now they want to come here and play Guitar Hero and eat cookies and drink juice. Before I had kids and even when Frances was very little, I imagined that I'd love that kind of house, the house where all the kinds want to hang out. I find, however, that I kind of hate it. I need kids to go home. I want to sit down in my uppity negro t-shirt, braless, eating banana bread and reading Dean/Castiel slash in peace. But now, instead of kicking off my shoes and collapsing on to the couch when I get home, instead I have to run around making sure the bathroom is clean and that I remembered to pick up my underwear from the middle of the floor and that the more racy romance novels I've been reading for my new project aren't just sitting on the dinner table. That's a lot of pressure, which wouldn't be so bad if Frances actually participated in keeping things neat. But clearly that's too much to ask. And what do you at dinner time? Do you just kick kids out of your house? Am I supposed to feed everyone that comes over? Exhausting.
Work update: It was suggested recently, by someone whose opinion I trust and value, that I should take myself and my job more seriously. Not that I'm not serious about my work, but that my work, particularly on my campus, is important and that importance is noted. That's paradigm-shifting for me. I still feel like goofy 19-year old me. To really let it sink in that for a good portion of the day I'm actually professional, super-competent, respected 37-year old me feels new and a little strange. I think I like it.
Finally, romance project update: I'm wrtiting an article about Zane right now and will be doing an academic book on AA romance and erotica (hopefully!), but I'm thinking I want to do something with black romantic film. I'm trying to generate a list of films that have a black romantic love (rather than parental or filial or racial love) story at its center. Anyone have any favorite love stories?

We Get Paid For This?

2010-09-01T14:45:00.000-04:00

Today I got my first royalty check for Conversations with Octavia Butler. Completely unexpected and considerably more than I suspcted a royalty check might be. It definitely put a good spin on what was threatening to turn into a crapoy kind of a day. Most of it will go to responsible adult things, but I clearly I deserve a new pair of shoes. I have my eye on these:

Strategic Parenting Plan

2010-08-27T11:24:00.000-04:00

I have been in strategic planning mode for work. The African American Studies program is in the process of proposing a major and doing other (hopefully!) exciting things and that has necessitated a writing out a deliberate plan of action. Apparently I talk about this strategic plan a lot because here is a conversation Brian and I had this morning after dropping children off at school. But first the back story:

Last night, after being asked repeatedly if she'd done all her homework, Frances decided at 8:00, her school night bed time, that she had to redraw a picture of Abraham Lincoln. She had drawn Lincoln at Gettysburg (complete with RIP headstones in the background as he delivered his speech), but decided she wanted to draw him getting shot at Ford's Theater (she ultimately drew a picture of John Wilkes Booth with a gun in his outstretched hand chasing Lincoln across the theater). She spent an hour whining and groaning in her room because she couldn't get the picture right and she was tired and just wanted to go to sleep. I was deeply annoyed. And then this morning she informs us at 6:45, when none of us are dressed or fed, that she wants to get to school by 7:30. She normally gets to school at 7:45 and with advanced notice can get to school at 7:30, but of course there was no advanced notice and so she got to school at 7:45. She grumped away from the car, letting her pout indicate her extreme disappointment in my parenting.

And Cate decided to wear flip flops to school today (because you need to wear open toed shoes with dresses), despite the fact that the new rule at her school is no open toed shoes on the playground. A huge fight ensued, with Cate insisting that she couldn't possibly where sneakers with a pretty dress and ending with flip flops on her feet and sneakers in my hand. And remember that this is happening while Frances is pacing up and down upset because she wants to get to school at 7:30. When we got to Cate's school her teacher saw the sneakers in my hand and said it was great that Cate would have an extra pair of shoes to change in to when she played outside. Very happily Cate replied, "Yeah! That's a great plan!"

It was a challenging parent morning. And so here's the conversation:

Brian: I'm going to email you and schedule an appointment.

Conseula: For sex? Why are you always talking about sex?

Brian: No not for sex. We need to write a strategic plan.

Conseula: A strategic plan for what?

Brian: A strategic parenting plan. The mission will be "preventing Consie from strangling children through a deliberate program of equitable co-parenting."

Thankfully for all of us Brian continues to stick around.

Insert Snappy Title Here

2010-08-26T19:02:00.000-04:00

I've been inspired by this post over at She Writes. In it Kamy Wicoff discusses the five ways blogging has helped her writing. Most useful for me in that post was the reminder that blogging is a useful way to exercise the writing muscles on a regular basis. There's something to be said for forcing yourself to sit down and churn 500 or so intelligent and intelligible words about whatever happens to be on your mind at the moment. Plus, people keep asking me when I'll post something again and it seems so lame to say that I'm just too ~~lazy~~ tired to actually write anything other than a syllabus.

But what to write is the question, isn't it? Going back to the reason I started this blog in the first place is a good place to start. I felt and still feel that there are too few afrogeekmoms speaking their truth in the world. I'm convinced our numbers are legion (surely there's nothing special about my love of comic books and Star Trek and the Jonas Brothers [I totally blame that one on my children] or about my blackness), yet too few of us speak up and demand to be counted. And so here I am to be counted.

I'll try to post regularly about things that are foremost in my mind lately:

(1) Our oldest kid is going to middle school next year and our youngest is starting kindegarten. That means, for those of you doing the math, that Brian and I will spend this fall touring and applying to tons of schools. In a perfect world, buckets of money would fall from the sky so that we could send Cate to a Montessori school and Frances to an all-girls prep school. But since I decided being an English professor at a public university was a good career move, that seems unlikely to happen. The entire process, which I haven't even begun yet, makes me want to crawl in a hole and cry.

(2) I am working on a project (the shape of which has yet to be determined) on contemporary African American romance and erotica. I'm currently writing an article on two Zane novels and trying to figure out why no one has written a book on African American romance in film (if I'm wrong about that, please please tell me). I have many thoughts on black women and sexuality and depictions of black love that will probably never find their way into a book or article. I should share them here.

(3) There should be more geeky stuff in a blog that features the word geek so prominently in its title. I'll try to fix that problem with tales of my geeky adventures. For instance, last weekend I watched, for the very first time ever, an entire episode of the original Star Trek (several episodes actually). I alternated between unadulterated giddiness at the sheer greatness of the storytelling (why didn't anyone tell me how great original Trek is?) and utter horror at the incredible, unapoolgetic sexism (have you seen "Who Mourns for Adonais?" and don't get me started on Uhura's outfits).

Stay tuned.

Still on the Road in Louisiana

2010-06-16T22:05:00.000-04:00

from Afrogeek Princess, aka Cate
I love staying here long. I played princesses with my cousin Morgan. I've been a sneaky rascal in Mimi's room. And I hate the smell of crawfish.

from Mommy
In other Louisiana news, Frances got her ears pierced. This is her before:

And this her after:

The ear piercing went off without a hitch. No drama at all. My mother says it's because she was completely in charge and laid down the law. She said I'm too emotional and that Frances takes her cues from me. No one was allowed to be emotional. We went to the store, Frances sat in the chair, the slightest inkling of a tear appeared in her eye, my mother said that we weren't having any of that, and we didn't. So now we have piereced ears. I totally deny the too emotional charge, by the way.

We've eaten a lot of food, but most of it is food at home, which is so specific to my childhood and so filled with nostalgia that it loses a lot in translation. But trust me, there's a lot of food being consumed.

On the Road In Louisiana

2010-06-12T23:31:00.000-04:00

Guest Post by AfroGeek Daughter, aka Frances

We have been traveling across the country to see our relitives. It's going to be sooooo fun in Louisiana. We are staying for two weeks. Oh I almost for got about a party we went to today. I had my first crawfish! Well I acually had three, but my dad ate my fourth one. At that same party I got my face painted to look like a dalmation with it's tounge sticking out. After that we went to my grandmather's house(we call her MeMe). Tomorrow or some other day this week I'll get my ears pirced with MeMe. On our way out of Louisiana we will go the Audubon Zoo. We have a song about that in the car. This is going to be the best trip to Louisiana ever!

Sincerly

Frances McCann

A Post about Sensory Integration Dysfunction That Won't Make You Cry

2010-05-19T18:38:00.000-04:00

For the three of you regularly reading this blog, you've probably not had any occasion to read anything about sensory integration dysfunction (or sensory processing disorder), so you've probably shed no tears over SID-related posts. But out there somewhere is a parent roaming the internets looking for something, anything, about SID, hopefully something from a parent's pov, hopefully something that doesn't make you want to roll up in a ball of despair. This post is for you.

On the latest episode of NBC's Parenthood, Adam and Kristina, parents of Max, a little boy who has Asperger's, struggle with the question of when to tell their son about Asperger's. Though many people quibble with the show's portrayal of Asperger's (some say the child actor gets the mannerisms all wrong, some say the writers are treating Asperger's like a death sentence), what I've been enjoying is watching the parents navigate their way through all the therapies and information and advice, trying desperately to make the right decision, trying to hold on to the knowledge that, above all else, Max is a really great kid.

Cate is only four so there's a lot of stuff about sensory integration dysfunction she just won't get (like needing a lot more proprioceptive sensory input than other four year olds in order keep her nervous system modulated enough to do seemingly simple tasks like get getting dressed in the morning). But I still think about how much to tell her, what information does she need. Since she's already a fluent reader, I went in search of a kid's book about SID and found Why Does Izzy Cover Her Ears?: Dealing With Sensory Overload. From the hiding under the table, to the hitting of other kids, to the feeling crazed up, to the love of being beneath a really heavy blanket--this book was all about Cate. And her little face as she read aloud about Izzy to her sister--it was the face of recognition, of "Wow. That's exactly what it's like inside my body." This book does an excellent job of narrating the experience of someone trying to navigate SID, of explaining the difference without pathologizing or exoticizing it.

If, like me, you're looking for a childern's book to share with your child or with other children about SID, I can't recommend this enough.

Re: Iron Man Parte Deux

2010-05-18T18:43:00.011-04:00

Conseula is currently seething in a stew of her own making due to the incaluable wrongness of her take on Iron Man. (Actually, I'm not exactly sure what her position is. I'm just poking it with a stick. [Don't tell her])

At this point do I actually have to post SPOILER ALERT? If you haven't seen the movie, and if you're a person who hates to have any portion of the movie revealed before you see it, then I suggest that you leave the room.

...

Are they gone? Okay, Conseula was excited by the appearance of what seemed to be a partially constructed version of Captain America's shield. I agree. The parts are clearly if not the shield, then they are components of a shield. My problem is that what we saw on screen is clearly not in keeping with the continuity of the Marvel 616 universe (616 is the main Marvel universe in which most of the comic books are set.)

FANBOY ALERT!

Okay, those of you who know, know that there have been several incarnations of the shield: at least two kite-shaped ones, like this example from Captain America No. 1.

However, the one suggested in the movie is the round, convex one that most people are familiar with. According to Marvel lore etched into the brains of fanboys (and girls) the world over, Cap's round shield was created accidentally in the 1940s by Dr. Myron MacClain out of a vibranium/adamantium alloy.

This shield was presented to Cap by FDR as a replacement for the last of the kite models that was destroyed in battle.

That being said, the shield in the movie does not match the 616 universe's description of Cap's shield. In the first place, there is a problem of the shield's construction. According to canon, Cap's shield was molded in one solid piece, with the star, stripes, and blue field subsequently painted on. The Iron Man 2 shield is not solid, but seems to be made of several components.

A second problem has to do the Iron Man 2 shield's origin. If the movie's Cap actually fought in World War II, did he have the circular shield, or didn't he? If he did have it in the 1940s, then what was Howard Stark doing with an unfinished copy of it? If Tony Stark is close in age to Robert Downey, Jr's 44, then his father would probably be in his sixties or early seventies, which would have made him a child during the war. The government is not in the habit of giving contracts to children, even exceptionally bright ones. This is all to say that I don't believe that the shield the movie shows is Captain America's shield.

So, while I doubt that the shield in the movie is Cap's, there is no doubting the shield's evidence. How do I explain its existence? It's possible, that in keeping with canon, both Cap and his shield are lost in the North Sea in 1944. The shield that we see in the movie could have been an attempt by Howard Stark to duplicate Dr. MacClain's results. However, this raises an difficult question, without a Captain America, why build a Captain America shield? If Stark could produce an unbreakable metal, couldn't he have made countless other objects that would have been more useful than a shield?

It is possible that the Marvel movie universe differs in some ways from universe 616. The movie Cap of the 1940s may never have wielded the round shield, or any shield at all. It's even possible the either S.H.I.E.L.D. or the US government might have been in the process of producing another Captain America while Howard Stark was alive.

In any case, for the record I'll state that the movie shield is not Captain America's shield. We'll have to wait for the movie to for any further explanation.

Until next time, Face Front True Believers, and Excelsior!

Random Quote from Brain Child*

2010-05-18T18:31:00.000-04:00

Catherine Newman's article in the latest issue of Brain Child is about evolution (I think...I haven't actually finished it yet). I love Catherine Newman. Her essay, "Why I Will Not Marry" teaches remarkably well in freshman comp (mostly because it freaks them out so much). Her recipes from family.com have delightful descriptions like "Feeds 4 (as long as one of those four people is a child who won't eat itl)"**. And her essays include delightful paragraphs such as this defintion of "reproductive success":

"...the term 'reproductive success' has nothing to do with foreplay, Tantric ecstasy, or simultaneous climaxing. It's about whether particular traits help a particular organism live long enough to produce offspring. Your husband could do you from behind while you were bent over to sort the Tupperware drawer. And if you got pregnant and passed along your organizational skills to your offspring? Evolutionary Bingo! Reproductive success."***

* This was supposed to be a review of Iron Man 2, but Brian and I are having a disagreement about what the review should say. Stay tuned.

** Brian has suggested this is not really as funny as it is in my head.

*** Brian is similarly unamused by this. I think he's grumpy because he's wrong about Iron Man 2.

It's Not All Bad

2010-05-17T17:25:00.000-04:00

So some of you are concerned that I seem really sad and/or miserable and/or on the verge of throwing myself in front of a bus. No need for alarm. While things certainly could be significantly better, I can easily name a number of people whose lives are signficantly worse. So, you see, the universe balanaces itself it out.

Things that help:

1) Cate never ceases to amuse and amaze with her wit and charm. Overheard recently from Cate--in response to me insisting that maybe tights in 90 degree weather is not the best idea, "Mommy, stop it. You are parenting all over me." And upon receiving a Goosebumps book in a kids meal at Popeyes (home of her new favorite meal, red beans and rice), "Oh no. Oh no. This is levels of inappropriate." And in the car, two days after swimming in the pool, "There's something lucky about adults. Their feet can reach the bottom of the pool everywhere. I wish I could do that."

2) Brain Child Magazine--I'm not really a fan of mommy blogs and I have learned recently that special needs blogs and newsgroups just make me more anxious than I already am. But I love Brain Child ("the magazine for mothers who think"). I love that many of the experiences of parenting I encounter there (a mother whose kid's special needs are so vast and all-consuming that she wishes she never had him, parents who advocate spanking, parents who feel guilty about not taking their kids camping) are nothing like mine. I love that the magazine is not about me while still managing to be exactly about me at the same time. Does that make any sense? It's smart and well-written, often times funny, and just as often hreatbreaking. I love it.

3) Guitar Hero World Tour and Trombone Shorty--I got this game and this cd for Mother's Day and they have brought me no end of joy for the last week. Sure, Guitar Hero is really bad for my carpal tunnel and Trombone Shorty's "supafunkrock" makes Brian and I homesick, but still, a good time is being had by all.

But She's So Smart, and so Special

2010-05-10T15:35:00.000-04:00

Yes, there has been a long long silence here and I could provide a long detailed explanation of the financial and personal and professional crises that have resulted in my absence here (some of them still on-going), but that would just depress everyone.

So, moving right along (to a rant of sorts--how unsurprising)...

Our youngest daughter is being treated for sensory processing dysfunction, which is not to be confused with sensory processing disorder, a lifelong condition. She has particular kinds of developmental delays that may "correct" themselves as her nervous system develops, and occupational therapy is being employed to give her some strategies to deal with the delays until then.

This sounds perfectly reasonable to me (clearly, since we trek to and pay for OT every week), but I have been amazed, and annoyed, at how unreasonable this sounds to other people. Admittedly, other people don't live with Cate. They aren't up with her at 3 in the morning because she can't sleep until she's read all the books in the room or she's weeping because she's listened to Springsteen's version of "We Shall Overcome" five times in a row and it's made her sad. Other people don't have to deal with the anxiety caused when we park the car in a different spot or we insist she wear weather appropriate clothes. Or the fear we have that she will leave the house in the middle of the night or walk off at soccer because she's trying to get to a place where she feels less "crazed" up. When other people see Cate, they see a happy, healthy, smart goofy kid who is slightly "out of sync." All kids have their quirks. We all feel "crazed up" some times, they say.

Well, yeah, but also no, not at all. What would be nice is a little faith that I'm not making these things up, that I'm not overprotective and paranoid, that I know my kid better than other people. It would be nice if people stopped insisting "but she's so smart, I'm sure she'll be fine," and started celebrating the fact that there's a professional out in the world who has been able to figure out that Cate feels less "crazed up" when she literally gets to hang up side down or get a big bear hug or fall down from something. It would be nice for people to acknowledge that being able to read at 2 and add at four doesn't guarantee life success, especially if you're terrified of the PBS logo or the computer screen suddenly turning blue when it comes on.

Other people tell me Cate is special. They mean, "yeah she's a little weird, leave her alone." My reply is this: She is special, more special than other people can even comprehend. And it would be a shame to let some of the things that make her special limit all the things she might be and accomplish in the world.

When Are We Going To Start Telling White Girls to Date Outside Their Race?

2010-03-01T13:55:00.000-05:00

Laurel, Md.: Isn't it funny that almost all of biracial children are beautiful? It's almost like God is trying to tell us something.

Karyn Folan: I agree 100%!

_______________________

Let me just start by saying that I've been married forever, so I don't have a dog in this fight. No, let me take that back. I am the parent of two one-day-to-be black women, so I actually do think about these things.

The Washington Post featured yet another article suggesting that black women have sad and sorry lives that can be made better if we just find ourselves a good white man. Karyn Folan, author of new book about interracial dating (by which she clearly means black women dating white men) offers all sorts of advice and insight from her research in response to reader questions, including the exchange above. Her responses to questions reminds me a lot of the kind of conversations in interracial romance groups (as I continue my research into contemporary AA romance). The notion very much seems to be that somehow readers of IR romance are more progressive and open-minded and just plain smarter than readers of AA romance. Folan seems to think the same thing. Because she's gone and gotten herself a white husband, she somehow has figured out something the rest of haven't.

But the thing is, she's not special. Nor are IR readers. Snagging a white man doesn't make you smarter than the rest of us. It just means you snagged a white man. And counseling interracial dating for black women does nothing to address the systemic problems that lead to discrepancies in the education and economic status of black men and black women, nor does it do anything to address the fact that being single and 30 doesn't make black women special. Not every "problem" that black people have is a pathology. Not every problem is an actual problem.

Also

2010-02-21T12:51:00.000-05:00

Courtesy of Postbourgie

Dear World

2010-02-21T12:39:00.000-05:00

I appreciate that you are excited about black people. It is February after all. I also appreciate that you want to include me in your excitement. It is part of my job as the director of an African American Studies program.

But could you see fit to spread some of that enthusiasm to other parts of the year? Trying to learn everything you can about black people in 28 days is a tall order, an impossible one even. Plus, I'm exhausted.

So let's make a deal. Save some of that enthusiasm for March or April or October even. And I promise to help you out.

Sincerely
(An incredibly tired) Conseula

Chris Rock Makes Up For the Misogyny of "Good Hair"

2009-12-23T15:40:00.001-05:00

During an appearance of Jay Leno, Chris Rock expresses dismay over people's defense of Roman Polanski, reminding us that he raped a 13 year old girl and calling rape "barbaric." His good sense here makes Good Hair that much more disappointing.

Girl Zines: Making Media, Doing Feminism (or, Why Alison is Awesome)

2009-12-16T09:47:00.000-05:00

I was supposed to be a part of the blog tour for Alison's latest book, Girl Zines: Making Media, Doing Feminism. In fact, my post was due *weeks* ago. But swine flu and end of the semester craziness has slowed me down considerably. But in this case, I think that's a good thing. I've gotten to read the amazing reviews the book has been getting and have gotten to hear what other bloggers and zinesters have to say about the book. All of these people have been talking about what they take from the book as feminists, as zinesters, as people interested in girl culture. I'd like to talk about what I take from the book as an academic, as a person who makes her living talking and writing about contemporary culture.

For those unfamilar with zines or are familiar with zines and can't fathom why someone would write a whole book about them, here's a snippet from NYU Press's blurb about the book:

With names like The East Village Inky, Mend My Dress, Dear Stepdad, and I’m So Fucking Beautiful, zines created by girls and women over the past two decades make feminism’s third wave visible. These messy, photocopied do-it-yourself documents cover every imaginable subject matter and are loaded with handwriting, collage art, stickers, and glitter. Though they all reflect the personal style of the creators, they are also sites for constructing narratives, identities, and communities.

Full disclosure: Alison and I are in a writing group together and I got to read Girl Zines as it was coming together. What I find exciting in this book and in Alison as a scholar is her refusal to look at these quirky, personal, often silly, and just as often brilliant and heartbreaking creations, as either resisting patriarchal capitalism or complicit in female oppression. She early on threw out the resistant/complicit binary, reading this framework as limited and as limiting our ability to really engage the work these zines do in female communities. Their very existence, the sheer number of zines and zinesters and the fact that girls will very often make their own zines as soon as they discover their existence, is enough to make them worth our attention. What do we make of these "messy, photocopied do-it-yourself documents" and the girls who make them? Alison's response is to talk to these girls, read their work, and take them seriously. It seems such a simple answer, but it's not a position academics often take, especially when we're talking the cultural work of girls and women.

They Call Me Back Door Santa

2009-12-12T23:55:00.000-05:00

Even though I could listen to Christmas music every single day of the year (I will never tire of the E Street Band's version of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" or the Temptations' "Silent Night". I also cry every single time I see It's A Wonderful Life. I should be embarassed by these facts, but I'm really not.), Brian insists that Christmas music may only be played from the day after Thanksgiving until the day after Christmas. It's sore point in out marriage, but we'll probably survive.

Now that the girls are 9 and 4, I'm having to be extra careful about the music we play. Very little of Erykah Badu or Outkast is child-safe, for instance. But you would think that during this month when I'm allowed to listen to as much Christmas music as I want, I'd be safe. How can you go wrong with songs about Santa and reindeer and angels and Jesus?

Enter once of my very favorite Christmas songs, Clarence Carter's brilliant "Back Door Santa" (the clip is the Black Crowes' version, but still pretty decent). While Brian's favorite Christmas song, Charles Brown's "Please Come Home for Christmas," is crazy depressing, "Back Door Santa" is *dirty.* Here are some choice lyrics:

I ain't like old Saint Nick
He don't come but once year
I ain't like old Saint Nick
He don't come but once a year
I come running with my presents
Every time you call me dear

I can't listen to that with the girls in the car. Can you imagine Cate, who loves music and picks up lyrics and melody amazingly fast, singing that at her preschool? I will have to content myself with Donny Hathaway.

Cornel West's Recipe for a Lasting Relationship

2009-12-03T14:15:00.000-05:00

A colleague forwarded to me a scathing review of Cornel West's most recent book, a memoir called Brother West. The review contained this choice paragraph from the book:

“The basic problem with my love relationships with women is that my standards are so high -- and they apply equally to both of us. I seek full-blast mutual intensity, fully fledged mutual acceptance, full-blown mutual flourishing, and fully felt peace and joy with each other. This requires a level of physical attraction, personal adoration, and moral admiration that is hard to find. And it shares a depth of trust and openness for a genuine soul-sharing with a mutual respect for a calling to each other and to others. Does such a woman exist for me? Only God knows and I eagerly await this divine unfolding. Like Heathcliff and Catherine’s relationship in Emily Bronte’s remarkable novel Wuthering Heights or Franz Schubert’s tempestuous piano Sonata No. 21 in B flat (D.960) I will not let life or death stand in the way of this sublime and funky love that I crave!”

It's hard to believe he's been divorced four times, isn't it?

Some Musings on My Romance Research*

2009-11-13T20:01:00.001-05:00

Through a combination of Amazon used book orders and paperbookswap.com transactions, I have been treated to a new romance novel in the mail every other day or so for the last couple of weeks.

Checking the mail has quickly become the highlight of my day. How can you not enjoy opening an envelope and have that cover greet you?

Get Your Sexy On is from Kensington's Aphrodisia line and features on its back cover, like all books in that line, this notice:

WARNING!

This is a REALLY HOT book. (Sexually Explicit)

For me that warning screams "pick me up! pick me up!" but for others, it's a genuine warning. Angela over at Save Black Romance posted today about her frustration that black sexuality is presented as sweet rather hot in Kimani Press books. In the comments there is some discussion about whether this is a response to what black female readers want--sweet romance, perhaps, counters the stereotype of black people as oversexed--and whether this is a bad thing. I do know that this Kensington warning would be enough to keep my mother away from this book.

Interesting also is the fact that this book is an interracial romance--black woman, white man--a very popular subgenre of the subgenre that is African American romance fiction. But it's really hard to tell from that picture, isn't it? And the synopsis on the back cover doesn't give anything away either.

TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT...

The men crowd in and howl for more when Sin's on stage - she knows just how to work it, wrapping her lithe body around the pole to dan*ce down and dirty. But Sin doesn't see them, lost in a world of her own...until sexy private investigator 'Mac' Garret McAllister steps into the club.

...WHAT YOU REALLY REALLY WANT

In one night of erotic passion, the man turns her world upside down. Mac pays homage to her beautiful body with delicious, carnal ferocity. When the sun comes up, she cuts out. She can't let him get too close to her heart...But two years later, they reunite. Still on fire for her, Mac is ready to do whatever it takes to ensure his woman stays right where she belongs - in his arms and his bed. Forever this time.

Who are they trying to trick into reading this book? Black women who only want black heroes? Or white women who only want to read about white heroines?

*Please note: I am sick. I have a 101 fever. I have been unable to sleep all day, so I've been romance novels. It's research you see. :) It's possible the above post is a fever-induced ramble. If so, I apologize.

Movie Review: Chris Rock's "Good Hair"

2009-11-01T10:54:00.001-05:00

I saw Chris Rock's documentary Good Hair the other night. It's been getting a lot of press, so I knew what to expect. I wasn't surprised by the lack of complexity--Chris Rock isn't a particularly subtle comedian. I wasn't surprised that, despite the lack of complexity, it was still a really entertaining movie. The thing that did surprise me, though, was the film's deep, deep misogyny.

I think Rock is sincere when he says he's worried about his black daughters' self-esteem and is trying to understand how they learn that "good hair" is something other than what grows out of their head. I believe him when he says this movie comes out of love of his daughters. That's why the conclusion the movie comes to--that black women are vain, high-maintenance, income-draining creatures who must be tolerated, at best, or avoided, at worst--is so surprising. Chris Rock doesn't seem to come to the conclusion (despite the film's concluding voice-over) that he has to surround his kids with more images of beautiful "natural" hair*, or that he should declare a weave-free zone on his set, or that black women's conception of beauty is way more complicated than can be gleaned from a weekend at the Bonner Bros. hair expo, or that there's nothing at all wrong with relaxing or weaving or braiding your hair. No, Rock seems to conclude that his daughters will eventually, inevitably, become crazed black women addicted to the "creamy crack," looking for men to subsidize their $1000 weave habit.

The humanity of black women, the humanity of Rock's daughters, is completely absent from this film. That's disappointing.

*And what is "natural"? I have two girls with very different hair textures, black cousins with straight hair, soft wavy hair, red hair, as well as coarse and kinky hair. I have an uncle who used to wash his fine, curly hair with laundry detergent to achieve the "natural" look.. "Natural" doesn't always mean Angela Davis.

Boys Worry About These Things Too

2009-10-20T14:57:00.000-04:00

Today a male student asked me just how many outside-of-work hours I spend grading papers. He looked really concerned. The question seemed to come out of the blue. I probably did look miserable and exhausted as I graded a pile of essays while students took mid-terms, but still, it was an unexpected question.

As it turns out, the student wasn't asking about me at all. He's about to graduate and is engaged to a girl who is currently student teaching. Apparently, she is prepping and grading all the time. What he really wanted to know was is it possible to do the kind of work I do and still have time for all the other stuff in life, like spouses and kids and non-work related fun.

I told him what I usually tell students, usually female students, when this question comes up--balancing a career I love and family I adore is really hard work. It takes a lot of deliberate planning to make sure all the demands on my time are being met, more or less, adequately, but, at the end of the day, it's a good life. A hectic, often disorganized life, but I good one. I stress that I have in Brian a partner equally committed to our family, someone who takes a great deal of pleasure in being a husband and father, and someone who is incredibly supportive of me and my work. The work/life balance is a lot easier when all the adults in the relationship are equally dedicated to the balancing act.

It's a conversation I have regularly with students, but it was the first time I've had it with a male student. He seemed to be at the beginning of the process of thinking through these issues, but it nonetheless made me happy to think his fiancee wouldn't have to think about these questions on her own.

Teaching Comics--Man of Steel by John Byrne

2009-10-03T22:52:00.001-04:00

I'll say upfront that my pairing of Dark Knight Returns with Man of Steel may not have been the wisest choice. If I had it to do over again (and I probably will), I'd teach Marvel's Civil War instead, or just forego surperheroes all together because they are really hard to do in a class when you're also trying to look at all of the other groovy things that happen in comics. We could easily spend 15 weeks the appeal of superheroes in our society, on the difference between DC and Marvel heroes, on the difference between decidely good guys like Spider-man and not at all good guys (yet still heroic) guys like Deadpool, on whether the X-Men are metaphors for race or sexuality, on whether Wolverine's claws could slice through Superman's skin. Instead we spent only two and half weeks on superheroes and the rest of the time we'll look at memoirs and non-fiction narratives/journalism and race. That meant choosing superhero books that were representative, but could also stand alone.

All that said, I also chose Man of Steel, precisely because it stands in sharp contrast to DKR and because it is a direct result of the same impulse that gives us DKR--namely, a desire of DC's part to re-boot marquee characters. I thought the contrast would make for interesting class discussion. I was wrong. So so wrong.

The students, collectively, almost unanimously, *hated* Man of Steel. They hated its lack of irony, they hated the unambiguous line drawn between good guys and bad guys, they hated Clark Kent's/Superman's old-fashioned manners and way of being in the world. It was a disaster. Where Bruce Wayne was adored for being so wracked with guilt and grief about his parents' deaths that he is driven to a psychopathic vendetta across the city, causing himself great physical and pyschological damage, Clark Kent was mocked for doing the right thing simply because it was right and he could. He was simply too unbelievable for my students.

Afrogeek Kids Book Recs

2009-09-23T23:06:00.000-04:00

Every time I think about possible regular features for this blog, "Book Updates" always makes the short list. I imagine regular posts about what I'm reading, with witty commentary that shows off well my really expensive literary education.

Alas, I spend most of my time reading for class (which means skimming books I've read dozens of times before or reading student writing), reading for work (right now, lots of, mostly, random articles and essays on romance novels), or reading to children (we're making our way through the Lemony Snicket books, which I am finding deeply disturbing).

The girls, however, are reading up a storm lately. Frances, our nine-year old 4th grader, is reading NERDS. Here's the Amazon description:

Combining all the excitement of international espionage and all the awkwardness of elementary school, NERDS, featuring a group of unpopular students who run a spy network from inside their school, hits the mark. With the help of cutting-edge science, their nerdy qualities are enhanced and transformed into incredible abilities! They battle the Hyena, a former junior beauty pageant contestant turned assassin, and an array of James Bond–style villains, each with an evil plan more diabolical and more ridiculous than the last.

The hysterical giggles from her room go on well past bedtime when's she reading this book.

Cate, our three-year old pre-schooler, in the last month has started reading independently. Her favorite thing to read lately, besides anything with My Little Pony on it, is Once Upon a Time, The End (Asleep in 60 Seconds). It's Amazon description:

Here's a fresh approach to fractured fairy tales: take one small child's insatiable demand for "just one more story" and add a sleepy parent's wish to get the bedtime ritual over with as quickly as possible. The result is this collection of eight condensed folktales. For example, Goldilocks and the Bears begins, "There were some bears;/It doesn't really matter how many./There was a bunch./Let's get to the point" and ends, "When the bears came back,/They found her asleep./She woke up, screamed, and ran home/So she could sleep in her own bed./Just like you." The sometimes sly, sometimes outrageous, sometimes simply silly humor will go over the heads of most preschoolers, but it's right on target for their older siblings (and tired parents, of course)

That last part isn't true of our pre-schooler. Cate seems to take great delight in the father's insistence that his kid go to sleep. She's also really enjoying Thelonious Monster's Ski-High Fly Pie.

The tune for I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly is likely to echo in children's minds as they listen to the words of Thelonius Monster's Sky-High Fly Pie, in which an earnest monster chef intends to swallow hundreds and thousands of succulent flies. After obtaining some helpful hints from a spider via e-mail, Thelonius creates a sticky crust, gathers flies, attaches them to the crust, and invites eleventeen ravenous monsters for dessert. The resulting creation is a thing of beauty: the flies hum, they sparkle, they play orchestral music. And, alas, they fly away. Thelonius has forgotten to bake the pie, and off it goes.

The picture of the flies flying off with a gooey pie stuck to all their little feet apparently never fails to be funny.
One day soon I'll get to finish Sag Harbor, or Asterios Polyp, or Devil in the White City. But not today.

Remembering Dr. Pat

2009-09-21T23:17:00.004-04:00

Dr. Patricia Rickels was the director of the Honors Program at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette (where I was an undergraduate). She wore mumuus to work everyday because she came to the conclusion sometime in the 1970s that deciding what to wear every day got in the way of more important decisions. She was the much-rumored inspiration for Myrna Minkoff, the windmill-tilting, Negro-loving minx in John Kennedy Toole's Confederacy of Dunces (much rumored among the faculty at UL who knew Toole from LSU and UL). She befriended and worked on behalf of black people in the South at a time when nice white women never dreamed of such things--Dr. Pat thought being a nice white woman was wildly overrated.

Almost all of my good memories of UL are Dr. Pat related. She co-taught my favorite class, an honors seminar called Culture of Man. The library was our textbook and the course content was whatever caught our fancy. We went to plays and festivals, on road trips to Houston and New Orleans, all of free of charge, all made possible through some generous donation Dr. Pat bullied someone into giving. (I suspect she funded a lot of our class activities herself). I spent many an afternoon in the honors program offices, eating the endless free popcorn and hanging Mardi Gras beads on Baloo, the real, life-sized stuffed bear that, inexplicably, lived in those offices.

Dr. Pat was my advisor, as she was for all honors students who were English majors. She invented a minor for me (interdisciplinary humanities) because I couldn't decide between French and philosophy and history. She convinced me to stay in college an extra semester so that I could finish the requirements for an honors baccalaureate degree. "You would be the first black woman to to do it," she would say to me *every single time* she saw me, for months. "Somebody has to be the first. Why shouldn't it be you?"

She died peacefully in her home last week, having retired after 50 years of service at UL. She was a shameless flirt, an unapologetic liberal, an inspirational teacher, and a friend. Brian and I will miss her very much.

Teaching Comics Update

2009-09-16T20:54:00.002-04:00

After a rock start (rockiness which, I allow, was primarily in my head), my comic book course is swimming along. I knew it would all be okay the day when one student asserted, and several more agreed, that because comics have pictures you don't have to interpret them as much as you would, say, a Shakespeare play. (Ah, Shakespeare, the perennial go-to guy whenever the argument for the ornerous-nous of close reading needs to be made.) I knew then, whatever deficiencies I might have in comic scholarship (again, I'll grant those deficiencies are probably mostly imagined) I more than make up for in my ability to read a text well. Plus, I like to think that I've also gotten pretty good at helping students learn to read well.

The first book we read was Eisner's Contract With God and the conversation, over two class periods, was *amazing.* There was actual debate among students about the meaning of the repitition of of the streelight lamp imagery throughout the four stories, discussion of Einser's formal control as evidenced in his varied use of panel size and placement, a weighty discussion about the possibility/impossibility of a contract with God--it was great.

We've moved on now to superheroes. Before reading Dark Knight Returns we read a selection from Peter Coogan's Superhero: The Secret Origin of a Genre in which he argues that a superhero is defined by his/her selfless, prosocial, never-ending mission; superpowers or superior abilities that set him/her apart from ordinary humans; and a secret identity that is separate from and in contrast to their supehero identity and an iconic costume that is emblematic of that identity. Finally, such a person appears in superhero stories. If such a person appears in another genre, like horror, they are not superheroes.

In this excerpt he gave a very detailed argument for why Buffy the Vampire Slayer is not a superhero. Apparently those are fighting words. Several students made very impassioned arguments for Buffy's superhero status, with a few votes thrown in for Sam and Dean, the brothers on Supernatural. The result was a lively discussion about genre, the importance, or lack thereof, of genre distinctions, the difference between superheros and antiheroes, and whether a Norse god (namely, Thor) really cares enough about humanity to have a prosocial mission.

Tomorrow is our first day with Dark Knight. Stay tuned.

Disney Buys Marvel--Good for Girls?

2009-09-10T13:43:00.002-04:00

Disney has purchased Marvel and Bitch magazine is pondering the effect of this purchase on girls. I am too. Like my students I want to know what this purchase means for grittier Marvel fare like (like Deadpool and Punisher) and like some comics scholars I'm pondering the challenges and opportunties that come from being a part of a large (to say the least) corporation like Disney. But as the mother of two girls who consume a lot of Disney media (the obsession with the Jonas Brothers grows daily; "Squirrels in My Pants" is on constant YouTube loop), I do wonder what this might mean for them.

People seem to want to make a stark divide between girls' and boys' entertainment and read this purchase as Disney's way of regaining market share with boys, market share they've given up by focusing on girls' enterntainment like Hannah Montana and the Jonas Brothers. But what do we do with a girl who likes both Hannah Montana and superheroes? What if Disney, because they're already so tapped into the girl market, recognizes the possibility that girls can like fairies and princesses and rock stars with double lives at the exact same time as they like Spider-man and Ms. Marvel and Elektra?

Obviously I don't think Disney is going to become a bastion of progressive feminism any time soon, and I fully recognize that it is a corporation that exists to sell my children stuff, but I'm also not convinced that the stuff it sells my kid is all bad or problematic. (Which calls to mind thoughts on The Frog Princess, which I will share another day.) This is all to say I think there's great potential in this Marvel/Disney merger, potential that Disney, because it may ultimately serve their bottom line, may very well tap into.

Thirty-six is the Year of Pretty

2009-08-29T10:40:00.001-04:00

One of the things I realized on sabbatical (because while from the outside it looked like I didn't actually take a break, my sabbatical was in fact incredibly restful and provided ample opportunity for reflection) is that one of the reasons I felt like such a drudge is that I often looked like a drudge. Now, many will probably disagree (Brian continues to make all the right noises about how cute I always am, just as a good husband should), but that's hardly the point. I felt dumpy and really not-cute. So I got a kicky haircut that I really like and decided that 36 (my current age) is the year of pretty, which basically means getting dressed in the morning as if other people can actually see me.

The result? Since I've been back at work full-time (a week now), people continue to remark on my new look--my hair is cute, my earrings are adorable, I look nice generally. I usually respond with a smile and say, "Thank you. 36 is the year of pretty." What I'm actually thinking is, "What kind of hell did I look like before?" or "It's going to be really sad when I go back to being too tired to comb my hair in the morning."

This Is Not My First Day on the Mommy Job...

2009-08-26T20:42:00.003-04:00

...and yet, this morning found me on the playground of Cate's preschool *weeping.* I told Brian he would just have to quit school and go back home to taking care of her full time. We had to sit in the observation room until I was composed enough to be able to go to class.

Frances is in fourth grade and this is Cate's second year of preschool, so I've got a few first days of school under my belt. The weepiness this morning was quite unexpected and I am at a loss to explain it, though it does seem to go along with my general irrational emotional responses to all things Cate-related (that's a post for another day).

Cate, in typical Cate fashion, was completely unconcerned with my tears. As soon as she saw her teacher and she ran and gave her a hug and then turned around, hugged my leg, said a quick dismissive "bye," and walked away. Which really didn't help matters at all.

Here's hoping I get through tomorrow without feeling like an emotional mess.

Teaching the Comic Book

2009-08-25T21:05:00.002-04:00

Let me start off by saying the while I generally do for living what I trained in graduate school to do (I am, in fact, a college professor and a literary critic), there are many aspects of my job I never imagined in grad school. I never imagined that I'd be director of an African American Studies program (that was never really on my list of career goals), yet here I am. I fancy myself a scholar of the African American novel, yet I've yet to publish on the African American novel--a book of Octavia Butler's interviews, a book on the critical reception of Baldwin, an article on an intellectual crisis during the Harlem Renaissance, another on a comic book, but nothing on the African American novel.

And this semester I find myself, for the second time, teaching a course on the graphic novel. Today was the first day of class and I woke up in a panic feeling wildly unqualified to teach a course about comic books. Sure, I'm on the comics sholars listserv and have been absorbing comics theory and criticism for the last three or so years. Yes, I've been reading all the articles on comics I can find in journals and books. Yes, I read tons and tons of comic books. But still...I'm a scholar of the African American novel! To top it all off, because the course is big (40+ people), I'm teaching in one of our lecture rooms. There's a stage! I taught on a stage today, which totally exacerbated my anxieties about people looking at me while I'm teaching. (Yes, I know people are looking at me. I like to pretend they aren't though, which is rather difficult when you're standing on a stage.) So I'm standing on a stage, using Powerpoint (which, as a general rule, I detest), and feeling sick to my stomach because I feel like a big geeky fraud, when this exchange happens:

Very intense female student, clearly a lover of comics: Is there any reason why we aren't reading Maus?

Me, thinking, oh no I've been found out: Well, since even people who don't read comics, and I assume that most of the people in this class don't read comics, have been introduced to Maus in high school or some other arena, I thought we'd read other things together. I think it would be a better use of our time to look at things people haven't read before.

Girl: And people haven't read Dark Knight Returns?

Me, thinking I hear a hostile tone, but actually that's probably just in my head: Well, in my experience, even big fans of Batman and Superman haven't actually read a Batman or Superman comic. Of the many times I've taught DKR in various courses, I've run into very few students who have actually read it.

Girl: Well okay.

At this point the interrogation is over, though there were other questions about why there are no Marvel books on the syllabus and why I've never been to Comic-Con and whether their friend can draw their mini-comic. It was a very stressful 75 minutes.

Tomorrow I'm teaching comp and Intro to African American lit, both courses I could teach in my sleep at this point. But all I can think about is how not to make a fool of myself the next time I'm in the graphic novel course.

Breastfeeding Revisited

2009-08-12T19:21:00.003-04:00

At the risk of courting the ire that accompanied my last breastfeeding post (if you want to get a whole bunch of hateful, angry comments on your blog, just suggest that breastfeeding may not be all it's cracked up to be), I'm linking to this *great* piece by Hannah Rosin in the April 2009 issue of The Atlantic. I found the piece through a discussion on She Writes about taboo subjects in writing about motherhood and someone suggested that we aren't allowed to talk about how the notion that breastfeeding is the cure-all for whatever ails you is kind of bullshit.

Here's the intro to the piece. Go read it.

In certain overachieving circles, breast-feeding is no longer a choice—it’s a no-exceptions requirement, the ultimate badge of responsible parenting. Yet the actual health benefits of breast-feeding are surprisingly thin, far thinner than most popular literature indicates. Is breast-feeding right for every family? Or is it this generation’s vacuum cleaner—an instrument of misery that mostly just keeps women down?

Black Writers Rock

2009-08-11T21:10:00.005-04:00

Two noteworthy posts in the world of black publishing today.

First, Carleen Brice over at White Readers Meet Black Writers has a new store open at Cafe Press with really cool t-shirts, mugs, and bags. Claudia calls Brice a latter-day Georgia Douglas Johnson, and I tend to agree.

Also, Verb Noire, an independent publisher dedicated to, among other things, publishing stories by and about people of color, has a new call for submissions. They're looking for retellings of fairy tales and folk stories that feature people of color or that come from non-Eurocentric traditions. Check them out.

Questions Plaguing Me This Morning

2009-08-08T08:29:00.004-04:00

1. Where does one buy a boy's tie for a 9 year old girl that is both fashionable and school appropriate?

2. Does being vegan really mean giving up butter and cheese? That seems like torture. (Especially after seeing Julie and Julia last night with Alison and watching people having near orgasmic reactions to butter.*)

3. Why isn't erotica aimed at black female audiences better written? I applaud Zane for trying to fulfill each and every erotic literature wish black women seem to have, but man, does she need a good editor.

*As in our last trip to our local arty movie theater, Alison and I scanned the crowd to see if I were indeed, again, as usual, the only black person in the room. In fact, we spotted one other black woman, someone Alison knew. Which, I think, says, something about Alison.

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl

2009-07-29T09:35:00.007-04:00

Those who know me know that our battles with Cate, our youngest, over drawing on the walls are numerous and frequent. No trick or reward or punishment or lecture or tears works. She draws on the walls (I say "draws"--she actually draws, colors, scribbles, stamps, places stickers, glues paper...) every chance she gets. (Here I am reminded of something she said in the doctor's office after drawing picture of herself and making sure to include a knot in her hair: "I knot my hair. Anywhere. Anytime." With a devilish grin she said this.) So Brian and I have given in (despite our strongly held parenting belief that given clear boundaries and ample opportunity for self-expression, children will not draw on the walls--clearly Cate was sent to us to poke holes in all of our strongly helf parenting beliefs) and lined her room with drawing paper. The picture above is Cate just after Brian finished the first part of her wall. She immediately grabbed a marker, jumped on her bed and started scribbling. "I'm making crazy art," she said. "When I'm done, it will make you smile." The hat came later because artists where hats. If you look to the left, you can see evidence of the wall art the paper is now covering up.

And here is a picture of the finished project. Cate is just out of frame, knotting her hair. We found her in bed that night looking at all she drew (pictures of all us, superheroes taking the bus home, a turtle, a meat bug, among other things) and trying to cover up the fact that, in addition to drawing on her new wall, she had also drawn all over legs, ears, and scalp. "I wanted to be fancy," she said. And so, having, hopefully, conquered one problem, we embark on another.

Fun with Zane at My Local Library

2009-07-29T09:34:00.004-04:00

I think I've blogged here before about my new research project. I'm writing about contemporary black popular/market fiction--those books that are in face out displays at the bookstore during AA history month. The ones about baby mama drama and urban angst and freaky threesomes. I've been reading a ton of this stuff all summer and have finally come to Zane's work.

In typical academic fashion, when I decided it was time to read Zane's work, I decided it was time to read *all* of Zane's work. As her particular brand of erotica isn't exactly the kind of thing carried by my university library, I turned to the public library. I requested all the Zane books in the system and had them delievered to my local branch. Last Friday, I go the library and check out Twent-Six Princesses for Cate and Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing for Frances. At the desk, the librarian says I have four books on hold and brings me the ones pictured above. There was awkward silence as the librarian looked at me, then my children, then back at the smutty books I was checking out. I tried to be adult and rise above the embarassment I was feeling, but wound up just scooping up the books and rushing out the library.

We are in that library all the time. All the librarians there know my children by name. There are three more Zane books (with equally provocative covers, I'm sure) waiting for me to pick up. Can I say to them, "This is research. Really." I think I'll have to send Brian.

I Want My !@#$% Fruit Roll-Up

2009-07-13T11:39:00.003-04:00

This morning, Cate woke us up at 7am to request a fruit-roll up. We told her she couldn't have one and should have some real breakfast instead. She insisted, we resisted, until finally she banged her little fists on the bed and yelled, "I want a fucking fruit roll-up." We immediately sent her to her room for a time out and to think about why you shouldn't use bad language; and when she was gone, Brian gave me the "You know, this is all your fault" look.

It's probably true. Frances is a bit of a puritan when it comes to cursing and other bad habits, so she never repeats the myriad curses that come out of my mouth. but Cate--cate loves to curse, almost as much as I do. And I do love it. Actually "love" doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of how much I enjoy saying "fuck" in any and all situations. It's one of the most satisfying things I do, actually.

But clearly, we can't have Cate telling her pre-school teacher, "I want my fucking fingerpaints," so something needs to be done. But as I've given up sleeping in, buying new shoes whenever I want, vacations alone with my husband, Saturday mornings spent reading (instead of watching soccer games and playing ponies), it seems really wrong that I should give up the pleasures of a good curse word.

Michael Jackson

2009-06-27T07:59:00.002-04:00

Here are some random reactions to MJ's death from Casa Afrogeek:

--Frances asking, in quick succession while watching the news footage, "Isn't Michael Jackson supposed to be black?" "What's wrong with his nose?" "How can he spin on his toes like that?"

--Brian and I felt incredibly old when (1) upon hearing he was only fifty when he died, Brian, fast approaching fifty himself, said sadly, "He was so young" and (2) when the video for "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" came on and I got up in the middle of the floor and forced my children to dance with me, just like the old folks used to do to me whenever Al Green was on the radio.

--My mother and sister and I spent all night on the phone singing MJ tunes to each other ("Heal the world, make it a better place, for you and for me and the enitire human race...") because we apparently are characters on a sitcom

--Cate has discovered a new favorite song to shake her butt to, "Smooth Criminal"

Michael Jackson - Smooth Criminal
by Tina007

A Poem for Mothers

2009-06-23T18:25:00.003-04:00

Ode
by Elizabeth Alexander

I love all the mom bodies at this beach,
the tummies, the one-piece bathing suits,
the bosoms that slope, the wide nice bottoms,
thigh flesh shirred as gentle wind shirrs a pond.

So many sensible haircuts and ponytails!
These bodies show they have grown babies, then
nourished them, woken to their cries, fretted
at their fevers. Biceps have lifted and toted

the babies now printed on their mothers.
“If you lined up a hundred vaginas,
I could tell you which ones have borne children,”
the midwife says. In the secret place or

in sunlight at the beach, our bodies say
This is who we are, no, This is what
we have done and continue to do.
We labor in love. We do it. We mother.

Katrina Tourism

2009-06-21T12:11:00.004-04:00

Here at Afrogeek Mom and Dad, we don't talk about Hurricane Katrina much, despite the facts that Brian is from the 9th Ward, that his mother and sister lost their 9th Ward homes in the storm and have been unable to return to New Orleans, that Brian's is a typical New Orleans family in that they all lived in New Orleans for generations (some never leaving the city limits) and now that is all gone forever, with family scattered around the country. We don't talk about it much here because it hurts, really really hurts, still, after almost four years, despite the fact that we weren't in New Orleans when the storm hit. It hurts because of the devastation the storm caused in Brian's family, but also because the city that we know and love will never be the same again. Corporate greed, national apathy, and morbid curiousity are conspiring to turn New Orleans into a Disney-version of itself. It's heartbreaking. Over at The Bottom of Heaven, Frieda links to a video made by N.O. natives about the tourism industry that's grown up around the storm. Check it out.

No One Calls Han Solo A Bitch

2009-06-18T09:55:00.002-04:00

I am buried under a mountain of deadlines (one of them for a reader of this blog--I promise I'm working on it) and preparing to go out of town with the children and teaching. Busy doesn't even begin to describe these last few weeks. Yet, I have managed to watch Fanboys. As if George Lucas sensed my growing obsession with the new Trek universe (I bought an Uhura action figure yesterday--she's going to live on my desk at work), Fanboys is released on DVD to remind me of my first love. For all of you who are obsessed with all things Lucas, who can recite entire scenes of the original trilogy from memory, who camped out or stood in line for hours or drove to the next town over (like Brian and I did) because you had to see Phantom Menace first thing in the morning, then Fanboys is for you. Go rent it right now. For the rest of you, if the idea of a cancer-stricken guy and his pals driving across country to break into Skywalker Ranch to see a rough cut of Phantom Menace before it's released sounds like good a time, then you'll enjoy this movie too. But probably not as much.

My book has an ISBN #!

2009-05-26T20:42:00.001-04:00

Look what I just saw: HEE!

That is so so cool.

Random Thoughts From Boston

2009-05-25T10:17:00.002-04:00

1. Darius Rucker was on my flight from Charleston to Atlanta. He is foxier in person than you expect.

2. Elizabeth Alexander, who gave an amazing reading that was both a celebration of poetry and a an assertion of the importance of academics to poetry, wore the most unexpected, sexiest 4-inch stiletto heels. They were incongruous with her cute, baby doll face.

3. The intellectual earnestness of graduate students is unparalleled.

4. I am no longer a junior scholar. Not only that, but on more than one occasion, when people saw my name on my name tag, they said, "Oh! I know you from [Afrogeek Mom and Dad or the Comics-Scholars list, or my school website]." I found that a little disconcerting.

5. There was an anime convention in town, so it was not uncommon to see Sailor Moon and Captain Jack sitting at Au Bon Pain enjoying muffin together.

6. Hotels are the very best invention ever.

7. The Starbucks banana bread recipe is not the same all over the country. In Boston, banana bread comes with some kind of weird icing and is light anf fluffy. That's just wrong. Someone should write a letter.

8. The best meal I had was in a restuarant in the airport. I had a heavenly dish with crab cakes and grilled scallops and shrimp. I may have dreams about that meal.

I'm home now, with a ton of work to catch up om. All in all, it was a lovely trip.

Drive-by Post

2009-05-21T17:03:00.002-04:00

Hey All!

I have been woefully absent from ths space. (I know, same old song...)I started back teaching last week at the exact same moment as I caught some creeping crawling death from the three year old. I have been alternating between grading and lying on my sofa, curled up waiting to die. And now, I'm off to Boston for the American Literature Association conference where I will present on race and American superhero comics for a bunch of people who have probably not seen an actual comic book in ages. (Though, to be fair, I read tons of comic books and am also a college prof--maybe all the academic geek-y types will come out of the woodwork for my presentation). Plus, Elizabeth Alexander will be there!

Here are some updates:

Work--The page proofs for my Octavia Butler book came yesterday. Woohoo! One step closer to being an actual book on in an actual store.

Books--I finished the Pride and Prejudice zombie book. It was an enjoyable read, but really had only one joke to tell. I'm dying to read Colson Whitehead's latest. I may finish the Twilight series.

Movies and TV--I've been mainlining episodes of Supernatural on DVD. I know what you're thinking--"Conseula, aren't you terrified of zombies and ghosts and demons?" Yes, I am, and watch a lot of the show through my fingers. As creepy as it is, though, it is also really funny and heartbreaking and I love it. I also saw Star Trek again. Spock and Uhura are my current happy place.

I'm off to teach now. See you when I get back from Boston.

Star Trek is Made of Win!

2009-05-10T20:26:00.003-04:00

In rare instance of the universe arranging itself so that Brian and I could see not one, but *two* movies in one week without having to pay a babysitter, we managed to see both Wolverine and Star Trek. And while I enjoyed Wolverine a great deal (Hugh Jackman is amazing, and sexy as hell, as Wolverine and that guy whol played Gambit wasn't bad either), Star Trek rocked my socks. Brian and I are both Trek fans (though I've never seen an episode of the original series) and were super-excited to see this. (side note: Brian proposed to me after we saw the first Next Generation movie, so Trek has a special place in our hearts.) It was satisfying both for people who know Trek and got all the inside jokes (don't listen to the haters who are saying the film monkeys with canon; the movie does fool with canon, but in crazy delightful ways that make my fangirl heart really happy) and for people who've never seen anything Trek related before now.

I don't want to give anything away (so, if like me, you hate any kind of spoilers, stop reading now), but my very favorite part of the movie is the fact, despite the marketing campaign's suggestion otherwise, Uhura is not, in fact, the ultimate prize for the alpha white male. Kirk doesn't win her as a reward for his aggression and general disregard for the rules. Something much better than that happens. But you'll just have to see it to find out what that is.

Were-lions Make Me Blush*

2009-05-06T14:36:00.003-04:00

Brian and I were in Barnes & Noble yesterday doing a little pseudo-research for a project I'm just beginning. As Brian often helps black women find the kinds of contemporary commercial fiction they are most interested in, I asked him to point out some of the titles that seemed the most popular. This resulted in me standing in B&N, reading the back cover summaries of books, giggling and blushing. Why didn't anyone tell me how *dirty* contemporary romance fiction is? The *summaries* had me blushing like a schoolgirl. I can hardly imagine what's actually in these books.

*There was one book in the romance section, not featuring black characters, about a romance novelist who tries to overcome her fear of cats by making the male protagonist in her latest book a were-lion. Without warning the character comes off the page as an actual flesh and blood being and she becomes involved with him. I opened the book to a random page and was greeted by the dirtiest, kinkiest sex scene. I squealed and dropped the book because I'm, apparently, 12.

Kick, Push...and Coast

2009-04-30T12:46:00.002-04:00

Our new car has a great new sound system and the girls are getting their money's worth from it. Their latest favorite song is "Kick, Push" by Lupe Fiasco (check him out in the video). When I say favorite, I mean we listen to it incessantly in the car. In the morning, when we are in the car for approximately 10 minutes on the way to school, that means we listen to it about 2.5 times. But on Saturdays, when soccer games and birthday parties and grocery shopping and library trips and play dates keep us in the car off and on all day, I hear this song about 12,693 times. Brian and I are conspiring to get them to like something new (though the sound of the three year old singing the chorus in the backseat is kind of cute).

C.O.R.A. Diversity Roll Call Week #4--Shortcomings by Adrian Tomine

2009-04-29T21:15:00.005-04:00

This week's roll call asks us to write about a Asian, South Asian, or Asian American writer we like. I'd like to recommend a comic book (or graphic novel, if you like) called Shortcomings by Adrian Tomine. I'd read some good reviews of it here and there and saw it on the shelf at my local comic book shop (where I had gone to purchase the latest issues of Tiny Titans and New Avengers), so I picked it up. It was amazing.

The basic story revolves around Ben, his girlfriend and his lesbian best friend. Ben (and his girlfriend and his best friend) is Asian American and may or may not have a serious white girl fetish. The story follows a typical narrative arc of self-deluded protagonist finding some clarity by the story's end, but what I really enjoyed about this book was Tomine's ability, through the art, to get me to *feel* Ben's cluelessness, his desperate need to keep himself in the dark. Tomine has a wonderful ability to convey awkward silence in this book. And as I am endlessly fascinated by works of fiction that portray the way race is actually lived in America (it matters when it matters, it doesn't when it doesn't, as I tell my students) while also being about something completely unrelated to race (in this case, how soul-sucking New York City can be, how soul-sucking self-delusion can be), this book rocked my socks.

Afrogeek Bookshelf

2009-04-21T11:19:00.005-04:00

I thought my sabbatical would be full of lazy days spent reading whatever my heart desired. Instead, I've mostly been writing (which should not at all be read as a complaint) and reading things related to that writing. All that said, here's an update on what I have been reading:

I love Pride and Prejudice. Love it love it in a crazily cliche girly way. I am also terrified of zombies. Don't give me your logical "zombies aren't realy" arguments. Zombies are scary. Imagine my surprise, then, when I started Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and found myself utterly charmed by it. It's exactly what it sounds like: zombies in the P&P universe. Elizabeth and her sisters are Shaolin trained fighters of the "unmentionables" and Darcy is pretty handy with a blade and rifle himself. The plot and setting of the story is exactly the same as the original, only with more zombie goodness. I haven't finished it yet, but I'm enjoying it so far.

I am endlessly fascinated by discussions of black intellectuals not only because of the work that I do, but also because I am a black intellectual. Houston Baker's provocative title, Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Rights Era, immediately caught my eye when it was first published, but I'm only now getting a chance to read it. He posits MLK as the quintessential black public intellectual and measures the likes of Michael ERic Dyson, John McWhorter, Cornel West, and Shelby Steele against that standard. You can imagine how they fare. Baker is a great combination of agile thinker, engaging, playful writer, and snarktastic wit. His book, aside from being both painfully smart and delightfully catty, is also a great resource for those interested in the concept of race man/woman. This book is changing the way I'll teach King/Dubois/Baldwin in the future.

And finally, I am re-reading Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin. I'm writing about this book for a project completely unrelated to my book on Baldwin. I haven't re-read it since graduate school. The Baldwin book (or the Bal-damn book, as my husband as taken to calling it) has made it really hard to remember what I love about Baldwin, his work has been such a huge weight on my shoulders for so long. But this novel is a good reminder. If you haven't read it--the story of 14 year old John Grimes' religious conversion as well as the story of the adults who in his life (and that is such a inadequate description of this book about religion and blackness and racism and urbanity and the difficulty of becoming a whole human being capable of love)--you should rush right out and get it.

If You're Gonna Suck, Suck Out Loud*

2009-04-20T18:17:00.003-04:00

I am, by nature, a shy person and creature of habit. I am happiest when left to read a book in a corner by myself (or with my husband or children). This fact comes as a surprise to people who have met me recently, since I've become a full-time working adult. I tend to hold my own in conversation and do well in new situations and in front of groups (though secretly I am a great big ball of anxiety because I suck at small talk and hate the knowledge that people are actually looking at me). My transition from a shy person to someone who pretends not to be shy happened after I got married and had children. Brian is a naturally gregarious person who loves to be the center of attention and is genuinely interested in other people. Traveling through life with Brian means having to get used to talking to all sorts of people. When we had Frances it became immediately apparent that she, like her father, loved being in the world and loved being with other people. Not wanting to inhibit her natural curiousity and fearlessness, I found myself pretending to be perfectly comfortable with engaging in conversation with parents and kids we didn't know, venturing down paths we'd never going down before, and generally doing things just because they were new. I tried to model the behavior I wanted to see in Frances, despite how much I would have rathered just go home and read a book.

Which brings us to last Saturday when Frances and a friend and I went to the Avery Research Center for a demonstration of blues harmonica and African drumming. All of the participants were given a harmonica and taught a few basic notes. And then we were all supposed to jam together. Renard Harris, the harmonica instructor, would point to each of us in turn and we would play or sing or drum or do whatever. This is exactly the sort of thing I spend my entire existence avoiding. But there I was with Frances and her friend, both of them looking terrified at the thought of being called on, and there was only one thing to do. Whenever Renard pointed at me, which he did several times, I blew on my harmonica or sang with enthusiasm, as if my stomach wasn't a big knot of anxiety.

In the end I think both girls had a really good time. Frances has been playing her harmonica almost non-stop since Saturday (she's writing blues songs in her notebook and listening to old Chess blues--every once in a while we hear her from her room saying, "Amen brother, Amen" while listening to Muddy Waters or Bo Diddley). I kind of hope, though, that I don't have to play harmonica or sing again any time soon.

*When Renard tried singing in a band for the first time and gave a really timid, lame performance, his friend gave him this piece of sage advice.

Poetry is the human voice

2009-04-13T21:21:00.002-04:00

I blame Claudia and Rich for getting me hooked on this blog meme. For this week’s C.O.R.A. Diversity Roll Call, participants are asked to post and discuss a poem by a woman of color.

1)Post a poem by a woman of color. Your choice must be a poet who has written in the last forty years. Do your best to avoid the most anthologized, popular poets unless poetry is new territory for you. In that case, check out why the popular poets are well loved.

Poetry, I tell my students,
is idiosyncratic. Poetry
is where we are ourselves,
(though Sterling Brown said
“Every ‘I’ is a dramatic ‘I’”)
digging in the clam flats
for the shell that snaps,
emptying the proverbial pocketbook.
Poetry is what you find
in the dirt in the corner,
overhear on the bus, God
in the details, the only way
to get from here to there.
Poetry (and now my voice is rising)
is not all love, love, love,
and I’m sorry the dog died.
Poetry (here I hear myself loudest)
is the human voice,
and are we not of interest to each other?

This is a poem called "Ars Poetica 100: I Believe" by Elizabeth Alexander. Yeah, she's famous now because of Obama's inauguration, but a few months ago she was merely a successful, if a bit obscure, academic poet.

2)Tell us why you like the poem you chose. Don’t worry about the technical aspects of writing poetry, devices or forms. Give us your reader’s response. How does it make you feel or what does it make you think about? What questions does it raise for you?

I generally like "Ars Poetica" poems (even when they're not called "Ars Poetica," like Amiri Baraka's "Black Art"--"Poems are bullshit unless they are/ teeth or trees lemons piled/ on a step.") and this one resonated with me immediately. I love the urgency and the passion of it, as the speaker desperately tries to communicate something fundamental to her students. I love that there is a sense that, despite her best efforts, she's hasn't quite gotten her point across. She knows that they haven't heard her, but she's going to keep trying ("here I hear myself loudest"). I feel like that a lot in class.

3)If you are a poetry reader and you can recommend a contemporary woman poet of color, who do you recommend and why? I would really love to hear about emerging or lesser known poets. Introduce us to poets from around the world.

Ai is a poet who is grungy and bluesy and kind of depressing actually, but always a really provocative read.

Of Splash Awards and Podcasts

2009-04-10T19:29:00.005-04:00

I have been enjoying an incredibly lazy spring break with my daughter. She's 8 and teeters wildly between needing to be in my constant presence, pratically attached to my side and wanting nothing at all to do with me. So this week was just a lot of hanging out and riding out the pre-hormonal storm. And while that was going on, two lovely things happened:

First, Claudia over at The Bottom of Heaven "splashed" us with an award for our "bewitching" blog. This is especially nice since TBoH is an addictive blog full of the kind of cleverness, intelligence and consistency (!) I aspire to.

An second, Djuanna at divafictionbytes interviewed me for her podcast series. We talked about what it means to be a black female college prof in a place like Charleston, about what books I want my girls to read, and what gadgets I can't live without (hint: I'm a horrible Luddite), among other things. It's posted here. Check it out, but don't tell me if you think I sound too dorky.

Afrogeek Mom Goes to the Spa

2009-04-02T10:51:00.002-04:00

There has been a lot of silence around these parts lately. My only excuse is that life sometimes really just sucks. The latest suckiness in our lives resulted in us having to buy a new car. Now, while riding around in a car in which everything works as it should when it should doesn't suck, having to pay for it kind of does. Alas.

Today, though, I ventured out in to the truly awful weather to a local day spa to get a facial. Here is what happens when you get a facial: you are led into a room where the aesthetician instructs you to put a drape-y garment around the top part of your body; she asks about your skin problems and skin care regiment (my response: "uh, I wash my face with soap and use suncreen in the summer"--this was not the right answer) and then shines a very bright light in your face to check things out. Upon looking at my face under this very bright light, the aesthetician says, "Ill have to do some extractions today. Don't worry. Everyone has them."

My immediate reaction is, "oh, you've seen the blackheads on my nose. You'll get rid of them. Yay! You probably have some special spa scrub or mask or strip or something. More yay!" Fifteen minutes into the facial, though, I hear her say, "Tell me if you feel too much pressure." I think she means she will be pressing hard on my face as she applies the magical spa blackhead-removing potion. Oh no. The pressure comes from her literally *squeezing*, with her *fingers*, the blackheads out of my nose. Isn't that crazy?

The whole time this is going on, I'm thinking, "Wow. Brian would do this for free at home." On the other hand, that it needed doing suggests that we aren't actually going to do it at home. And my face is lovely now (I even have on lip gloss, which feels really foreign on my mouth but looks kinda foxy), so I guess it was money well spent.

Literary Obama

2009-03-18T08:20:00.002-04:00

I'm guest-blogging over at Literary Obama. I reviewed Amazing Spider-Man #583 (also known as the Obama comic). Check out the review and check out the blog, which chronicles literary works by and about our 44th president.

New Independent Publisher: Verb Noire

2009-03-16T14:19:00.002-04:00

I came across this today, a new start-up hoping to make a difference in sf/fantasy. There mission:

To celebrate the works of talented, underrepresented authors and deliver them to a readership that demands more.

What does that mean? That if you're a talented writer with an awesome, original story about a POC girl/guy/transgendered character, there is a place for you. And that if you're a sci-fi/fantasy fan who has grown tired of the constant whitewashing of these genres, there is a place for you, too.

Now that isn't to say that we will accept ANY ol' manuscript as long as it features a POC protagonist, because we will NOT. What we're looking for is quality, soul and PASSION, something that will resonate with readers for years to come.

"Everyone has a story." These words are the driving force behind this project, because we believe that EVERYONE has at least one good story in them, and that story demands to be shared with the world.

Today they made an addition to their call for submissions:

In other Verb Noire news we've decided that we need your best young adult and independent reader submissions. This decision is in no way motivated by the complaints of my 9 year old son about Harry Potter and Lord of The Rings knockoffs or my teenage nieces griping about Gossip Girl knockoffs. Well it is, but don't tell them that or I'll never hear the end of it. Don't be afraid to be different. It doesn't have to be vampires, werewolves, witches, wizards, or about rich spoiled teens. In fact I'd prefer it if you avoid those tropes unless you're doing something totally new with them. Don't be afraid to create new tropes or utilize ones that have no European connections. We're doing something totally new here, so don't be afraid to branch out and do something totally new in your writing.

As Brian and I complain all the time about the lack of books with little brown girls as protagonists (books that are *not* about slavery or Harriet Tubman or jazz), we are excited about the possibility of Verb Noire.

Film Review: I'm Through With White Girls

2009-03-12T23:25:00.005-04:00

Conseula: I first read about this film about a year ago. It's an independent film directed by a black woman, produced by another black woman, about an afrogeek guy who dates white women. I figured there was no way I'd ever get to see this film, living as I do in Charleston. Imagine my surprise then when I happened upon the DVD in the video store the other day. I knew immediately Brian and I would be watching this on date night.

Brief plot synopsis: Jay Brooks decides that the problems in his relationships stem from the fact that he only dates white girls. He embarks on Operation Brown Sugar to find his black soul mate. And then he meets Catherine.

Brian: I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. The afrogeek part of me identified with the character of Jay -- his being a comic book, er, graphic novel artist, and his quirkiness, but I wasn't exactly a fan of his fear of commitment, and his lack of concern for the women that he dumped. Like most male characters in romantic comedies, he had to go through the fire in order to become the self-actualized person who could commit to a relationship with a woman who could truly be his soulmate.

As for Catherine, I immediately fell in love with her. Like my wife, she was pretty, smart, artistic and quirky. What was there not to like?

Conseula: Aside from the fact that some of the black supporting characters played like caricatures (to me at least) and the special features behind-the-scenes footage suggested the filmmakers took themselves a little too seriously (this film won't really make you re-think anything about race), this movie was still adorably sweet and funny and honest. Check it out.

Octavia Butler Graphic Novel

2009-03-11T08:26:00.002-04:00

When Brian and I heard Watchmen would be made into a movie (a movie we haevn't seen yet and won't see until Tuesday, so keep your spoilers to yourself, people), we were an equal mix of giddy joy and dread. I'm having the same reaction to this news (courtesy of Rich over at Glyphs) that Beacon is planning to adapt Octavia Butler's novel Kindred as a graphic novel. My first reaction is "woohoo!" Any new Octavia Butler material is always a good thing and the news that the executor of her estate wants to adapt all her work means their could be new work for years to come. My second thought, though, is that of all her work, Kindred is the least likely to yield an interesting graphic novel. Maybe I'm biased because it's my least favorite of her books. But an adaptation needs to be more than a simple transcription and that means the story needs some depth and complexity. There needs to be more story to tell. I'm not sure that's the case with Kindred. The Parable series and the Xenogenesis series seem to me better candidates for this kind of adaptation.

More Happiest Toddler on the Block

2009-03-06T14:57:00.003-05:00

I realize that I didn't fully explain the fast-food rule. I don't have the book sitting in front of me, but I'll give it try anyway.

Basically Karp argues that you talk to an upset toddler (or any upset person, of whatever age) as if it were a fast-food exchange. When you are the the drive-thru and order a #3 with extra pickles, the guy inside repeats your order back to make sure he's got it right before telling you what the total is. He doesn't speak until he's sure you're done speaking and that he's heard you correctly.

So, in the case of your toddler (or mine), when the kid is upset, instead of saying "It's okay, it's okay" while they are hysterical, repeat back to them what they are saying (in toddler-ese). They get to speak first because they are upset. You should also hit their "sweet spot," mirroring back their emotions, maybe ratcheted down a notch or two. So be sad when your little one is sad, be angry or scared when they are. Your little one, if this works right, recognizes that you hear them and empathize and then they calm down enough to hear what you have to say. When it's your turn to speak, you can remind them of the rule they just broke or distract or give them an alternative or whatever else you need to do diffuse the situtation. In Cate's case, sometimes just calming down is enough to diffuse the situation. Karp reminds us that these are the kind of interactions we have with our toddlers when they are excited. He gives the example of a kid who climbs to the top of the slide by herself for the first time. We let her express her enthusiasm first and we mirror that enthusiasm, in toddler-ese ("You climbed up! All the way! Yay!") before we then take our turn ("I'm so proud of you.")

A typical exchange here goes something like this:

Cate (hysterically crying because Frances won't let her stand in front of the sink to brush her teeth): I want to brush my teeth! I want to brush my teeth! Frances is breaking my feelings!

Me (getting down to her level): What's wrong Cate?

Cate: I was brushing and Frances won't let me. I want to brush my teeth. Frances is mean. She broke my feelings.

Me (with a sad voice): You want to brush your teeth?

Cate: Yes.

Me: Catie sad? Sad sad Catie?

Cate: Hmm hmm.

Me: Why don't we wait to for Frances to finish and then we can take our turn.

Cate: Okay.

On other mornings, there would be hysterical tears and yelling the whole time we're getting ready as I try to explain to Cate that she can just wait her turn or get her to brush her teeth in the other bathroom. Now, it's brief exchange in which I get her to calm down and we move on.

We're about a week into our campaign to get Cate to act like human child and not wild animal and it's going well. We are now adding in some of Karp's time-in suggestions and those are going well to.

Again, in my pre-Cate life I the very idea of reading a book to figure out how to raise your kid was just plain silly and wrong-headed. And, again, I'm not sure these tricks would have worked with Frances (Frances *hated* baby talk and responded, still does, best when you talked to her reasonably and truthfully), but this book is really helping with Cate.

Afrogeek Mom Recommends: Happiest Toddler on the Block

2009-03-04T23:14:00.004-05:00

Our three year old has the nickname "Barbarian." She is like some rare exotic forest creature come to live with us, one who has some curiosity about our human customs, but really no intention at all of adopting our ways. We are at a complete loss about what to do to civilize this creature, which is how we wound up spending our last date night in a bookstore looking through advice books about child-rearing.

Let me back up a bit and tell you a little something about kid #1. She certainly had her share barbarian tendencies. (I remember distinctly deciding when she was three and in the seemingly constant throes of temper tantrums that I was never having another kid.) But, all things considered, she was infinitely easier. We did a modified version of attachment parenting with her: we fed on demand, we had a family bed for three years, we held her has much as possible, we gave her as much skin-to-skin contact as possible. All of that seemed really natural to us and, frankly, worked brilliantly. When she started to walk and crawl we removed all breakable and dangerous objects from the low shelves and replaced them with her toys and books. She had (mostly) free reign of our apartment because we felt that it was her space as much as ours. We believed very strongly that little people, like big people, want to be treated with respect and dignity. So we explained rules to her instead of just handing down edicts. We set reasonable boundaries with reasonable consequences for stepping outside of them. Again, this all worked brilliantly. Our first kid is naturally a thinker and a rule follower--she likes things explained to her, in detail; she needs to know the whole plan before you execute it; she hates baby talk. We think she's turned out great. We felt we were great parents.

Then the universe sent us kid #2. None of our parenting tricks worked. As an infant, she was most content when left alone. She didn't want to be held or cuddled. She didn't want us to sing or coo. She wanted us to meet her needs and go away. When she learned how to walk she started trying to meet her needs herself, often going to the refrigerator or pantry to try to get her own juice or snack. She doesn't seem to care at all about rules. She is a big drama queen (one of her first phrases was "That's so tragic.") and an even bigger bully (she, at 3, thinks nothing of kicking or throwing something at her 8 year old sister). In short, we have a kid we don't know how to parent. So we went looking to a book.

Harvey Karp's assertion that toddlers (1-4 year olds) are like cavemen is exactly the kind of thing that would have had me rolling my eyes with my first kid. But, wow, is it an accurate description of kid #2.

We've been trying two of his techniques, the Fast-Food Rule and Toddler-ese. Again, if I had read this book 5 years ago, I would have scoffed. The idea of talking in "toddler-ese" and hitting my kid's emotional "sweet spot" when she's having tantrum would have read to me like complete pseudo-psychological nonsense. (We always refused to participate in the first kid's tantrums. We waited for her to return to a state of reasonable calm.) Truthfully, it read kind of like that now. Until I tried it.

Cate, since she's been potty-trained, wakes up once or twice a night to go to the bathroom. Only, she's so sleepy she doesn't quite realize she needs to go and gets really angry when you try to make her go. It's been a nightly fight for about a month now. Out of frustration I tried the fast-food rule and toddler-ese. Instead of saying, "Cate, you need to go to the bathroom. Let's go to the bathroom so you can go back to bed," in a sleepy voice that imitated her sleepy state, I said, "Sleepy? Sleepy? Catie sleepy?" She gave her little eyes a rub and shook her head. I said, again, in a sleepy voice, "So tired. I know. Let's potty and snuggle back in bed." Another nod. She went to the bathroom with no problem and went right back to sleep. No tears. No tantrums. No yelling. Amazing.

I was really skeptical of this book (And self-help books generally) and I'm not convinced it would have worked for the first kid, but I have to say, it seems to be doing the trick. She isn't civilized yet, but there seems to be hope.

Saturday Night Random-ness

2009-02-28T19:49:00.004-05:00

Random #1
The new television ads for Slumdog Millionaire are touting it as the most moving love story of the season. There a great shots of kisses and long, soulful looks against a soundtrack of almost riotous Bollywood music. Now, I have no problem with the characterization of this movie as a love story because it certainly is that. But it's also, in many ways, for large stretches of the movie, a deeply disturbing movie. It's about a guy's love for a girl and about his run on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire; but it is also about orphan brothers from the slums of Mumbai and the things they need to do and are forced to do to survive. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy the movie (I actually loved it). I'm just saying these new commercials are a bit dishonest.

Random #2
What kind sick, twisted universe do we live in that gives your child a 102 degree fever at 3am that then drops to 100 by 7am and 98 by the time you get to the pediatrician's drop-in hours at 8am? What the hell is that?

Speaking of hell--is there any more hellish place that drop-in hours on a Friday morning? Exhausted parents (because we've been up all night) with grumpy, germy kids all trying to get seen by the doctor before the weekend. We love our pediatrician and have no complaints at all about the care we get. But the 90 minutes we sat before we got to see the doctor (all to find out Frances *doesn't* have strep throat, just some random virus) even had me a little testy.

Random #3
I'm reading Order of the Phoenix with Frances. This is her first time through it (when we tried to read it aloud to her when it first came out, she told us it was too scary and, therefore, inappropriate for poppets; she said the same thing about Revenge of the Sith and still refuses to see it; this is heartbreaking to her father and I, but I digress) and my third time. Two things strike this time around. First, there is no way I would let my kid go to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It is a crazily scary and dangerous place. I suppose parents don't really know what's going on because Umbridge is monitoring all lines of communication and isn't letting out any bad news, but still. How many times does Voldemort have to attack Harry in or around Hogwarts before parents say enough?

Second, if Frances wrote fan fiction, she'd write great Mary Sue stories about her adventures with Fred and George Weasley and Lee Jordan. I used to, along with my best friend from middle school, write Mary Sue fic about our adventures with Bon Jovi and Whitesnake.

Happy Mardi Gras!

2009-02-24T17:39:00.003-05:00

I started to list Mardi Gras as a black thing that I love, but since it's actually a Catholic thing and not a black thing, it doesn't really qualify.

[This is Brian. She's not from New Orleans, so she doesn' t know about the foul debauchery that takes place at Congo Square (the corner of Rampart and Claiborne). There's nothing remotely Catholic about that!]

True, I have never been to Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Nice Catholic girls from Southwest Louisiana were not allowed to go to New Orleans for Mardi Gras (or any reason really) for fear that we would be turned into drunken sluts as soon as we crossed the city limits. (Though, to be fair, it is considered conventional wisdom at home that only tourists flash their tits for beads. Native girls know someone might see you and tell your mother, and you can't have that.) No, all of my Mardi Gras celebrations were spent in Lafayette, LA. You could take your kids and your grandmother and eat and drink and be merry for five days straight before you fasted and contemplated the sacrifice of Jesus for 40 days.

We are really missing Mardi Gras today.

Book Rec: Jump at the Sun by Kim McLarin

2009-02-20T08:43:00.003-05:00

Okay, I clearly suck at writing every day. But I'm here today, so let's get going.

I've just finished reading Jump at the Sun by Kim McLarin. It's hard to describe what this book is about because it's about so many things really, but at its root it's about maternal ambivalence. The protagonist, Grace, is a black women who has recently located to the suburbs of Boston with her husband and two daugthers. She is a sociologist who did not earn tenure at Duke and who is presently staying at home with her children. The book opens with her desperate realization that the unprotected sex she had with her husband could very well lead to baby #3 and that's the last thing she wants. The story then becomes her own articulation of her ambivalence and desperation, interwoven with the stories of her mother and grandmother, two women who made very different choices about the way they mothered.

This book was riveting and disturbing. At one point Grace is having a day that is very familiar to me--her children are unexpectedly out of school and are demanding to be entertained every minute of the day. She is at her wit's end, tired of their bickering, bored out of her mind with Candyland, and desperately needing a break. I've been there. I daresay there isn't a mother who hasn't been there. Grace's response to this though, contemplating leaving them (even going so far as to send them into the house and stand on the front porch rationalizing just walking away), freaked me out. I had to put the book away for a few days before I could continue.

What I ultimately loved about this book is how human and flawed Grace is. There is seemingly nothing at all wrong with her life (big house, bills paid, healthy beautiful kids, loving husband), yet still she is unhappy. That made her unhappiness more believable to me because it was real. Sometimes you just don't know what the problem is. McLarin isn't trying to tell me that suburbia is evil or that motherhood is soul-sucking or that black women are the mules of the world (though all those things might be true). She gives me a brief window into the mind of a woman who has tons of questions but very few answers and that, for me, made the book a worthwhile read.

Black Things I Love #8: The Cosby Show

2009-02-15T23:54:00.005-05:00

When I was in college (1991-1996, the heyday of neo-black nationalism), it was de rigeur to be deeply suspicious of The Cosby Show. The family was too unrealistic, the argument, trying too hard to prove to white America that black folks were just like everybody else, too eager to ignore the realities of black life. I wasn't a nationalist, but I sympathized with others' frustrations with the show. The life of the Cosbys certainly looked nothing like my black life.

Watching the show now, with my own black family, is a very different experience. My life still doesn't look like the Cosbys', though it is significantly closer than when I was in college, but I can appreciate what Bill Cosby was trying to do. It's nice to be able to turn on a black show that isn't about blackness. I like that the Cosbys were matter-of-factly black, without apology or explanation. I like that it's show that, while not representing my life experiences, nevertheless represents my experience of my blackness.

And here's what else I like: the completely angst-free portrayal of a two-income household. I love that Claire Huxtable being a mother and wife and lawyer was treated as no big thing--just another part of being a grown up. Does the show completely gloss over the fact that having a successful career and five (!) kids is significantly harder than they make it look? Sure. But again, without apology or explanation, they gave us a woman who mothered her children well, had a career she loved and was good at it, and who had a husband who clearly adored her. Claire Huxtable was too busy living her fabulous life to navel-gaze about having it all. Where can we find that on television now?

Black Things I Love #7: The Electric Slide

2009-02-13T10:08:00.004-05:00

I know I 've missed a couple of days. I've had some tooth trauma and a field trip with Frances's school, but I'm back.

First a Frances story: Her class took a field trip to Drayton Hall to learn about the Civil War. At one point, a guide was telling them about the 54th Massachusetts and how the men in that regiment said they would refuse their pay until they were paid equal to white soldiers. My daughter, sitting in the front row of course, says loud enough for everyone to hear, "I guess they never got paid then."
**********
Today's black thing I love is the electric slide. Every wedding reception, graduation party, Saturday BBQ in the park, etc. will, at some point, see a large group of people doing the electric slide. I even remember doing the electric slide on the sidewalk during Mardi Gras as a marching band marched past playing Cameo's "Word Up." It's a fun dance, easy to do, and incredibly egalitarian--young and old, men and women, tragically hip and profoundly uncool, everybody can do it.

Black Things I Love #6: Al Green

2009-02-09T20:36:00.002-05:00

I've often thought I'd like to write a book about my grandmothers.

My father's mother, Dorothy Mae, aka Dot, was a loud, funny, crude woman who loved Atlanta Braves baseball, fishing, and cold beer. She lived in a big house with a man I only ever knew as Mr. Happy. (I also thought he was a white man until I was in graduate school. I probably would have thought my grandmother was a white woman had I not known she was my grandmother.) She used chamber pots because she didn't trust indoor plumbing and kept a compost heap so she could use the worms for fishing. She bought my sister and I an Atari game system when they first came out and she fed us pineapple juice and toast whenever we slept at her house. We used to love going there.

My mother's mother, Tina, is not loud or crude. She very much believes one needs to behave with a certain amount of decorum in the world. Yet, she is also a woman who wants to be cremated and have her ashes scattered beneath the floorboards of a nightclub she frequented until it burned down. I was thinking about her last night as I watched Justin Timberlake (who comes pretty close to being a black thing I love) sing "Let's Stay Together" with Al Green at last night's Grammys. My earliest memory of Al Green is living in my grandmother's house, before my parents were married, and of spending weekends there after they were married, and hearing my grandmother play Al Green records on Sunday morning. This was a woman who grew up in a traditionally black "holy ghost" church (as we called when I was little) and who married a devout Catholic. There was an awful lot of church in her life. She responded to it by listening to Al Green sing "Love and Happiness" on Sunday morning. My mother says she always played a James Cleveland record first, but I only remember the Al Green.

Here, for your viewing pleasure, is Al Green at the Grammys.

Black Things I Love #5: Black Panther

2009-02-08T14:12:00.006-05:00

Today's edition of Black Things I Love is brought to you byBrian, aka Afrogeek Dad.

The Black Panther. Marvel Comics. King of the fictional African nation of Wakanda. And super kick-ass, bad-ass, super-confident 1960s hero with no need to stick-it-to-the-man. No blaxploitation here. Just a good, well-rounded image of blackness in comics that young readers could read and not feel ashamed of. He wasn't the first black character in comics, but he was the first never to be drawn as a caricature, never to be written speaking false ghetto-ese. He was never a sidekick to or a spin-off of a white character. He didn't get his powers by being someone else's lab assistant. He didn't get his powers in prison. [Note from Conseula: Brian here is bad-mouthing Luke Cage, which I really don't appreciate.] His multiple levels of super-asskickery come only from years of intense training and discipline backed by the science and religion of his own culture. I *heart* the Black fucking Panther.

Black Things I Love #4: Neil deGrasse Tyson

2009-02-06T21:38:00.009-05:00

Tonight the whole family went to the College of Charleston's Observatory open house. Five telescopes were set got to see the Moon, Venus, the Orion Nebula and lots of other cool stars I'm not going to remember. This outing inspires today's black thing I love: astrophysicist extraordinaire Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Every time I see him on television, he makes me start all over again as a physicist (despite my appalling lack of any real mathematical ability). After his last appearance of the Daily Show, for about a week, I harbored great fantasies about inviting him for a guest lecture at the College. I had the dinner all planned out in my head. Then I found out how much his speaking fee is and realized that dinner will remain a fantasy. He's still pretty awesome, though.

Black Things I Love #3: Lucille Clifton's Homage to My Hips

2009-02-05T18:39:00.004-05:00

To say that I weigh more now than I did when I was in college is a laughable understatement. That's me in the picture above. I'm probably 20 or 21 there (though I look 12; how much bigger could my head have gotten?) Since then I've had two kids and embarked on a fairly sedentary career. I used to run. Throughout grad school I was almost always enrolled in a dance class. Brian and I used to hike when we lived in Washington. (We went hiking for our honeymoon on the lovely Whidbey Island.) But life takes its toll and it seems to have taken its greatest toll on my hips.

Now many is the day when I'm perfectly fine with the body I travel the world in. But on those days that I'm not, I pull out this poem and I feel a little better.

homage to my hips
these hips are big hips.
they need space to
move around in.
they don't fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don't like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top

Somewhere Pecola Breedlove is Crying

2009-02-04T09:17:00.004-05:00

I feel inspired by Black Snob's post this morning, On Black Girls, Beauty, and Barbie Dolls. Go read it. You'll be moved, I promise. It was prompted by recent news that advertisers, in response to the popularity and adorable-ness of Sasha and Malia Obama, or the WeeMichelles as they are called over at Michelle Obama Watch, want cute little brown girls for their campaigns and that modeling agencies are scrambling to meet the demand. One agency rep offered this explanation for their lack of diversity:

Marlene Wallach, president of Wilhelmina Kids & Teens, says the First Daughters are tough subjects to match. “It’s a very specific age and a very specific ethnicity, so there aren’t that many girls that would necessarily fit the bill.”

WTF? One doesn't even know where to begin with is. Should we first point out there really isn't anything exotic at all about the "specific ethnicity" of Sasha and Malia? Are there any black people whose family has been here for more than a generation who aren't some crazy mixture of African and European blood? Should we point out that beautiful black girlhood looks like Malia and Sasha but also like Kyla Pratt and Keke Palmer and Willow Smith? Or do we simply point out that this woman clearly has never actually seen little black girls?

In the age of the Obama, when so many things seem possible, this is the kind of thing that keeps me awake at night. That people won't see my beautiful black girls, or that people will see them but will read their existence as some sort of aberration. I don't want my girls to be invisible or rare birds. I just want them to be.

Black Things I Love #2: Gumbo

2009-02-03T14:13:00.004-05:00

"On a cold winter's day, gumbo is communion for the body."--Brian

I'm sure some food historian out there my take issue with defining gumbo as "black," but as I'm from Louisiana and have never actually eaten gumbo (and I've eaten a lot of gumbo) prepared by someone other than a black woman, I'm going to call it black.

At home there are three questions that matter when meeting someone new: Who's your mama? Are you Catholic? And can you make a roux? While the first two are self-explantory, the third is nonetheless crucial. Roux (pronounced "roo") is the basis of any good gumbo (or etouffee for that matter) and getting it just right--cooking up butter and flour so that it turns a delicious caramel brown, without burning it, is considered an art.

In New Orleans, Brian's home, you can have okra gumbo or seafood gumbo or chicken and sausage gumbo. In Lafayette, where I'm from, we put all of that in the same pot (clearly the superior way to eat gumbo, though Brian doesn't let me cook it this way). If you meet anyone who is putting tomatoes or any other vegetable that isn't celery, onions, or bell pepper (the holy trinity of Cajun/Creole cooking), you know that person is making their gumbo all wrong.

Here's a last quote from Brian: "Make sure you put a little bit of cayenne pepper on top of your serving so that the gumbo lingers with you throughout the day, like any good sensual experience." (Actually what Brian said was quite a bit dirtier than that, but I've cleaned it up for you.)

Black Things I Love #1: Our Afrogeek-y President

2009-01-30T12:39:00.007-05:00

I'm trying to institute a little writing discipline into my life, so I'm participating in Nablopomo's writing challenge. Instead of writing about this month's theme ("want"), though, I will instead observe Black History Month and Valentine's day by writing about black things I love. First up, Barack Obama: Fanboy.

Tales of Obama's comic booking collecting are almost certainly exaggerated, but I find this Onion piece, about Obama's cabinet complete cluelessness when it comes to Marvel comics, hysterical and comforting nevertheless. Here's a snippet:

While Obama has not scheduled another meeting with his cabinet this week—a respite the president hopes they will use to brush up on the 235-issue Savage Sword series—he is expected to meet with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on Friday to discuss Afghanistan. A holdover from the Bush administration, Gates told reporters he may have gotten off on the wrong foot with the new president, citing an occasion when Obama asked him what he knew about 1984's Secret Wars, a 12-issue limited Marvel release. Gates then handed a visibly confused Obama 1,400 classified pages on covert CIA operations in El Salvador.

Is he really pacing up and down on the sidewalk outside his favorite comic shop every Wednesday (new comic day) hoping for the latest issue of New Avengers (my new favorite as of late)? Probably not. But the sheer geeky joy he seems to get from digging deep into the mind-numbing minutiae of political bureacracy or Keynesian economics or Medicare spending tells me he is fellow afrogeek.

Good Hair

2009-01-30T12:29:00.002-05:00

I've written before about my own hair drama, but not about the how the drama plays out in my relationship with my daughters' hair. It's conventional wisdom (at least where I am from) that the kind of angst white girls have about their weight, black girls have about their hair. One of the parenting things I think about almost constantly is my girls' hair and whether or not their sense of worth or their own beauty will be diminished because it's not run-your-fingers-through-it straight and bouncy like their friends or women in shamppo commercials. One of the most trying moments I've recently with my older daughter is the morning she had a fit in the kitchen because I would let her wear her hair loose to school for "messy hair day." She insisted that her teacher was going to brush everybody's hair after the class took a picture. How do you explain to an 8-year old, without making her feel like the odd girl out, that brush her white firend's hair back into a ponytail is not really the same as brushing her hair?

Chris Rock apparently had the same concerns about his own daughters and made a documentary about it. Check it out.

Inappropriate Silliness on a Friday Afternoon

2009-01-23T14:05:00.003-05:00

I had a whole post planned about my complete inability to parent the three year old who lives at my house (don't worry--that post is still coming). Instead of feeling sorry for myself, though, I'll post these instead.

First, in the tradition of Twisted Toyfare Theater, here is Barack Obama taking on ~~Dick Cheney in costume~~ Darth Vader, complete with light sabers.

And here is a lady talking about the Obamas' relationship. Watch and listen carefully. I think she has no idea she's being inappropriate.

Rev. Lowery Rocks My Socks; Praisesong for the Day

2009-01-20T14:21:00.004-05:00

I was a weepy mess during the inauguration, and applauded several times during Obama's speech. But I have to say my favorite moments of the day didn't come from Obama, but rather from Joseph Lowery and Elizabeth Alexander.

While I continue to understand and support (mostly) Obama's pragmatic downplaying of the racial significance of his victory, it was incredibly satisfying to have Lowery, in his benediction, remind us of the racial context of the day.

Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around... when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right. That all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen. Say Amen'...

And I also absolutely loved Alexander's poem. Here's my favorite bit

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by “Love thy neighbor as thy self.”

Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp — praise song for walking forward in that light.

Mommy Notes

2009-01-19T16:30:00.003-05:00

I have long held that part of what makes motherhood so difficult is the unreasonable expectations women are encouraged to live up to. (Brian could write a whole book on the pitifully low expectations of fathers, but that's another post). The idea that having a womb means that I will unequivocally, at every moment, enjoy my children and love the day-to-day task of taking care of them, for me at least, has been something I struggled with. Because, honestly, sometimes parenting is nothing more than a pain in the butt, no matter how cute my girls might be in their self-fashioned superhero costumes or playing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star on the guitar and moroccas.

A Chronicle of Higher Education article offers us some good news and bad news about parenting, particularly the nature/nurture debate. It's a great article about what the latest in sociology and psychology tell us about parenting, but this was my favorite bit:

According to a study by a team of scholars led by the Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, mothers enjoy child care just a little more than housework, and a lot less than watching television. As an economist, I have to suspect that a major reason for parents' lack of enthusiasm for their role is simply diminishing marginal utility: Average enjoyment of parenting is low because parents are overdoing it.

Notes from Sabbatical, Part 2

2009-01-16T11:37:00.003-05:00

(Hello Moxie Readers!)

The Good: I spent a guilt-free evening with Brian (it's a lot easier to enjoy date night when there aren't set of papers to be graded or class prep waiting for you at home). We saw Slumdog Millionaire, which was both heartwarming and incredibly disturbing, in part because the little kid who played the young Jamal looks a lot like my youngest kid--something about the big ears and the mischievious glint in his eyes.

The Unexpected: Everyone has an opinion about how I should spend my sabbatical and many people to seem to take it as a personal offense if they see me on or near campus. I am usually greeted by my colleagues with, "Hey. How's it going?" This week, almost everyone who's seen me on campus says, "What are you doing here?" I find that disconcerting.

The Not-So-Unexpected: I really don't want to be a stay at home mother. I am reminded again, as I am periodically, when the nature of my work allows me to spend an extended amount of time away from the office, that the care and feeding of children and the maintenance of a household alone cannot sustain me. I fully recognize that parenting is a lot easier when I haven't been at work all day. I'm not as exhausted, I have more patience, I get to go on school field trips. But I'm also fully aware that this arrangement is only temporary (my sabbatical is only a semester long), and since I'm writing and researching, I'm still working a great deal. That sustains me. This is not my life. And I'm happy about that.

Notes from Sabbatical, part 1

2009-01-14T11:03:00.003-05:00

I wish I had something profound to say about being on sabbatical, but sadly I don't. The only insights I've gleaned from my first three days is that I don't quite know what to do with unstructured time. My days stretch endlessly before me and that freaks me out a bit. Today was better than Monday (I did actual work today), but I can tell this will take some getting used to.

All that said, sabbatical does give me some time to indulge in distractions, like this:

Clearly everybody in American has already seen this video, but I'm just now seeing it from beginning to end. And while I find the politics of the song horribly bourgeois and kind of antifeminist, I can avert eyes. I love it.

I've also been thinking about this article from Bitch: Aint I a Mommy. One of the reasons I started this blog is because I was in constant search of moomy narratives that mirrored my experience. In all the talk about "mommy wars" you rest assured that the voices of women of color (not to mention single women or working class women or lesbian women) are few and far between. I wanted to hear from women like me: nerdy black women who loved their kids and their job and were happily, mostly, doing the mommy dance. I couldn't find those voices, so here we are. Now that I'm on sabbatical, I'll have some more time to reflect on the mommy dance.

Kwanzaa with the Afrogeeks

2009-01-01T16:35:00.002-05:00

I had a long post planned defending Kwanzaa, chastising those who mocked the "made up" nature of Kwanzaa (as if all holidays weren't man-made social constructs), correcting the myth that Kwanzaa is a black separatist, socialist holiday, but instead I will share how I came to celebrate Kwanzaa.

My oldest daughter learned about Kwanzaa last year at her public school. She learned that it was an African American holiday and wanted to know why we, a family of African Americans, didn't celebrate it. In my head I had a whole list of reasons, similar to the ones found in this article and the comments on this post, but I didn't tell her any of this. Instead I set about the task of reading all I could about Kwanzaa and figuring out how our family would observe the holiday. Last year it was important to celebrate Kwanzaa not because it was a black holiday but because my daughter, who often expresses anxiety about being the only black kid in her social circle, wanted to do something "black." However contrived the whole thing might be, easing some of her anxiety would be worth it.

The funny thing is, though, the family loved it. We bought a kinara and candles, but spent money on little else. We checked out some books on Kwanzaa from the library and read about Africa. We researched black scientists on the internet. We made a bunch of African flags from construction paper and made a black, red, and green streamer for the Christmas tree. And for seven days we enjoyed being together as a black family.

This year, as we got out the Christmas decorations, my daughter reminded me that we need to get out the Kwanzaa decorations as well. She had her wish list for Santa, but she was also looking forward to the handmade/useful/culturally relevant Kwanzaa gift she would get on the sixth night of Kwanzaa. She had hopes for a necklace made with African beads to match the bracelet she already owns. She was over the moon about the quilt made from her old t-shirts that she actually received. Our observance this year consisted of talking about the way we could practice the Kwanzaa principles all year (my favorite: the girls deciding on their own they could practice unity by not fighting all the time over toys), correcting my oldest daughter's impression that African American history consists solely of slavery and emancipation, reading about famous African princesses and fierce African American women, and listening to a lot of music (the baby has developed quite the passion for Motown and Miles Davis). We also made Kwanzza pal refrigerator magnets.

All in all, it has been a pleasant way to spend seven days

UPS Tracking is Evil

2008-12-23T08:26:00.002-05:00

I have been watching Christmas presents make their way across the country. Three days ago UPS tracking was my best friend. It was nice daily assurance that the things I ordered were making steady progress to my door. Today, though, it's just evil because now, instead of making steady progress, UPS tracking shows me that my gifts arrived in Charleston at 4:12am yesterday and THEY ARE STILL THERE. Without UPS tracking I could imagine that my gifts, which are not under my tree, are in a truck somewhere in Georgia or North Carolina making their way here. But no. UPS tracking gives me the ability to know that my gifts are sitting just a few miles away in a warehouse. Evil.

Things I Don't Know About Being Black--the Black Santa edition

2008-12-19T11:02:00.005-05:00

Last Christmas on NPR's Tell Me More, the Mocha Moms talked about their efforts to have Christmas reflect their identities--so that means there are only black angels on the tree, a nativity scene with brown-skinned wise men and a brown baby Jesus, a black Santa, etc. Only one of the moms even bothered with a black Santa because the other moms insisted on no Santa, stating that they didn't want their kids to think it was okay for a strange white man to come into their home at night or to think that a white man could give them something their parents couldn't. I dismissed this as typically goofy Mocha Mom foolishness (there is rarely a Mocha Mom segment on Tell Me More that doesn't make me roll my eyes), but during this holiday season, there have been a flurry of media stories about black Santas. Check it out:

a story about a local school hiring both a black and white Santa to take pictures with kids

an NPR story about how people would feel about going to a black Santa

a fascinating exchange on Black and Married With Kids on whether or not to encourage your kids to believe in Santa

It was this last one in particular that got me thinking because here were people who were like me--educated, culturally savvy, middle class black folk, trying to raise healthy, responsible kids. I thought everyone would see the Santa thing as a non-issue. Boy was I wrong. Almost none of the numerous commenters wanted their kids to believe in Santa. Many, in fact, were quite hostile to the idea, especially on racial grounds. The implication of the comments are that black parents are participating in the cultural oppression of their black kids by letting them believe in a white Santa. Some also commented that having your kids believe in Santa and then find out the truth sets kids up to not believe in other things they can't see (like Jesus).

Apparently being deeply suspicious of the whole Santa enterprise is a black thing I knew nothing about. There seem to be a lot of these things. For instance, I didn't know until three weeks ago that waiters and waitresses think black people tip worse than other people and that black people assume they will get worse service in a restaurant than other people. When I told Brian this new fun fact, he just laughed at my cluelessness.

For the record, our kids have seen lots of different Santas. We tell them that Santa uses his Christmas magic to look like the kids he's visiting. This seems to be a sufficient explanation for them and when they need a better explanation, they'll probably be too old for Santa.

Inappropriate Thoughts About Our New President

2008-12-17T14:50:00.004-05:00

Time posted these pictures of Barack Obama along with their article choosing him as person of the Year.

Black Snob said it best when she wrote: "He's Sammy, Dino, Frankie Blue-Eyes and Joey Bishop, Kool and the Gang meets a hot black nerd sandwich, hand-rolled into a ciggy and smoked."

Afrogeek A-Z Film Meme: H-Z (mostly)

2008-12-07T10:53:00.003-05:00

Finals and finals grading have interrupted our love of obsessive list-making. So here is the rest of the admittedly incomplete list. If anyone knows of any endlessly watchable movies that begin with the letters N, Q, Y, or Z, let us know.

H
Conseula: Hair Spray (the movie version of the Broadway version of the original movie)
Brian: Hudsucker Proxy
I
Conseula: Independence Day
J
Brian: Jurassic Park
K
Conseula: Knight's Tale
Brian: Knight's Tale
L
Brian: Lord of the Rings
M
Conseula: Muppet Christmas Carol
Brian: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
O
Conseula: Once Upon a Time in Mexico
Brian: Oxbow Incident
P
Conseula: Philadelphia Story
Brian: Pulp Fiction
R
Conseula: Rain Man
Brian: Ran
S
Brian: Saving Private Ryan
T
Brian: 2001: Space Odyssey
U
Conseula: Unbreakable (I still think this is the best superhero movie ever made.)
Brian: Usual Suspects
V
Conseula: Viva Las Vegas (my favorite Elvis movie)
W
Brian: What's Up, Tiger Lily?
X
Conseula: Malcolm X

Afrogeek A-Z Film Meme: A-G

2008-11-25T18:04:00.007-05:00

So I was reading over at Graphic Engine Bob Rehak's A-Z list of his favorite movies. As always happens when someone makes a list, I am compelled to make my own. And as always happens, when I ask Brian to help make such a list, we spend so much time disagreeing on the premise of the list, not to mention the actual contents, that we wind up with two lists.

In the end I decided to list the movies I find compulsively watchable. Brian decided to list movies he thinks everyone should see at least once.

A
Brian: Akira--the movie that introduced him to anime
Conseula: I originally picked Prisoner of Azkaban as my A movie because Azkaban is clearly the most important name in that title, but Brian called me a cheater. So I have instead chose Armageddon because I love every bit of the cheese-tastic goodness of this film and will watch it whenever it's on.

B
Brian: Bladerunner--one of the best made sf movies ever
Conseula: Big Fish--just the thought of this movie gives me a warm fuzzy

C
Brian: Chasing Amy (an excellent choice on Brian's part)
Conseula: Casino Royale (with Daniel Craig), tied closely with Color Purple

D
Brian: a tie between Dr. Strangelove, about which Brian says, "You should see this movie or even if it harelips everyone on Bear Creek" (those who know, know) and The Duelist
Conseula: Desperado--for the music alone; tied with Kevin Smith's Dogma

E
Brian: Excalibur--the first treatment of the Arthurian mythos that Brian actually enjoyed
Conseula: Empire Strikes Back--this is a placeholder for the original Star Wars trilogy. I have been watching these movies since I was a kid and will never tire of them.

F
Brian: Fail Safe--a Cold War nail-baiter. 'Nuff said
Conseula: Freak Friday (with Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis)--Frances and I love this movie

G
Brian: Glory--Brian's a sucker for suicidal sacrifice. Seriously.
Conseula: Get on the Bus--my favorite Spike Lee joint. It made me a lot less annoyed with the Million Man March.

More to follow...

Mommification of Michelle Obama: More Parenting in Public

2008-11-19T22:13:00.006-05:00

This Salon article on Michelle Obama's decision to be Mom-in-Chief in the new Obama administration and the writer's dismay that this is a retrograde decision on the part of the Obamas has been making the rounds the my corner of the blogosphere. I've been thinking about it for a few days, trying to figure out why, though I fully recognize the concerted effort that has gone into softening Michelle's public image, I am in no way bothered by her desire to focus on the children's transition to White House.

Maybe it's because I believe her when she says this is her choice, that the most important thing to her right now is that her children maintain has much normalcy as is possible when your father is leader of the free world. Brian spent the last two years being the primary caregiver of our children, being the one who is always here, the one who maintained their routine. Now that he is back in school and working full-time and no one is filling that stay-at-home parent role, the change is noticeable. We have created more chaos and unpredictability in our children's lives. While I think we're handling it fine and that our children are perfectly okay, I can only manage the chaos that's about to descend upon the Obama girls. What parent wouldn't want to dedicate as much time as they can to help their kids navigate that?

Maybe I also like the way Michelle's decision foregrounds just how hard and time-consuming caring for children is. And if you are committed to doing it well, to really making sure you end up with healthy, well-adjusted children, you're going to want to devote as much time to it as possible. Again, Michelle didn't quit her job to twiddle her thumbs while her kids are at school. She's decided to be responsible for creating the cocoon around her children that will help them come out the other side of this okay. That's a full time job.

Maybe I'm not convinced that Hilary Clinton was good model for First Lady. This article, and others like it, make the comparison to Clinton and imply that we're taking a step backward with Michelle Obama. Clinton's insistence on being involved in her husband's administration, her clear desire to be involved in politics are held up as the model for how to be First Lady. But, truthfully, I think that's bullshit. Because First Lady is not really a job. It's just a bullshit bourgeous title we give to wives of powerful men in a jacked up attempt to acknowledge the "importance" of these women. Why do we assume that Michelle Obama can replace her $273,618 a year job, a career she clearly loved and worked really hard for, and a support system she'd built over 20 years with some bullshit First Lady project? Would we really feel better if she dedicated the next four years to literacy or land mines or underprivileged youth? Do we really think the First Lady's agenda matters in any way at all? You know what matters? Making sure growing up in the White House doesn't fuck up your kids. I think Michelle Obama gets that as well.

And maybe I believe that Michelle Obama isn't really an extension of her husband, despite what it may look like in public. I always got the sense from both Bush wives that they were women of certain class who understood that marrying well meant becoming a reflection of your husband's ambitions and accomplishments. In that respect, First Lady was not a role change, just the role they've accepted writ large. The Bush marriages seem clearly not marriages of equals. And my impression of Hilary Clinton was, and remains, that she also isn't in a marriage of equals. She seems constantly fighting to prove to us, and perhaps herself, that she isn't an extension of Bill. The Obamas seems to deeply love and respect each other. Michelle has certainly sacrificed a lot in these last two years so that Barack can pursue this dream of being president, but there is every indication that he recognizes and understands and acknowledges that sacrifice. And I suspect there are things he's doing to make up for that sacrifice that are just none of our business.

And, finally, maybe Michelle doesn't feel it necessary or appropriate to bitch to the general public about how annoyed she may be feeling about this major change in her life. As I said a couple of posts back, private decisions made in public take on a whole different tenor. It may seems to all of us that she's putting a nail in feminism's coffin, but she might also be choosing to keep some of her life to herself. Would I like it if she sat down with Katie Couric for a heartfelt interview about how hard it is to be Mrs. Obama all the time, instead of just Michelle, or about how she manages to still be Michelle despite having to be Mrs. Obama in public? Sure. But I'm also fine if she's decided that, right now, she owes more to her children than she does to me.

Michelle Obama on Display

2008-11-19T11:39:00.004-05:00

Here are two great responses to the Salon article First Lady Got Back: An Appreciation of Michelle Obama's Beauty and Booty.

Over at Michelle Obama Watch Gina invokes the image of Gandalf in Lord of the Rings and says:

Erin Aubry “Balrog” Kaplan, handmaiden of misogyny, your foolishness and chicanery shall not pass. In the name of Sarah Baartman we rebuke your intellectually-challenged, historically-ignorant, self-hating assault on the dignity of our new first lady! ( Yes, its hyperbole, but so was that crappy article on Salon.com. I guess any Black person with a byline can get paid these days if they are “sensational” enough.)

And Mark Anthony Neal reminds us:

Underlying this notion of "realness" that Michelle Obama embodies are notions of accessibility and availability. If there is anything that the history of black women in this country should teach us, is that the idea that black women's bodies were accessible and available to any--and all--concretely frames our understandings of black women's histories whether it be the spectacle of the "Hottentot Venus" (Saartjie Baartman), the tragedy of Crystal Mangum or the nameless and faceless victims of sexual violence and rape.

While it is useful to remember that this kind of scrutiny and obsession with the hair, clothes, and body of women in the public is par for the misogynist course (can you imagine a Salon article speculating on the size and shape of Obama's black penis?), I find Neal's argument compelling. Maybe it's because I am a black woman and I parent two little black girls, but there is something especially disturbing about the way the figure (in all senses of that term) of Michelle Obama is available to the public. Yes, all First Ladies have their clothes choices and hairstyles dissected ad nauseum, but I find it difficult to imagine that we would ever be talking about Laura Bush's, or even Hilary Clinton's, breasts.

Mom- and Dad-in-Chief

2008-11-17T23:25:00.000-05:00

I am a little bit obsessed with the Obamas' transition to the White House. So obsessed, in fact, that I fear I'm becoming one of those people who might actually order commemorative White House plates, or who knows every detail there is to know about the White House Christmas tree. I used to make fun of those people.

I am particularly obsessed with the Obamas as parents, primarily because they seem to be handling with great grace a situation I would find almost wholly intolerable--parenting in public. I mean, yes, we all parent in public because our kids have interactions with the public and those interactions reveal something about our parenting (much to our horror sometimes). But, ultimately the decisions I make about how I parent (like not breastfeeding, attachment parenting the first kid but not the second, choosing a magnet school over a neighborhood school, letting them watch more TV than is probably healthy) are made in private, with the input of the entire world.

When you are parenting in public, private parenting decisions take on a whole new life. I read recently that now that Barack Obama and Malia have finished all the Harry Potter books and Obama is home more, they've started the Twilight books. That's a private parenting decision, but he's making it in public. I've written before about my love of the first book, but not about how dismayed I was at the second, and how kind of horrified I am by what I hear about the third and fourth. I would never ever ever read these books to my daughter. I'm a little appalled that Obama is reading them to Malia. The construction of young womanhood in these books is atrocious. I imagine (I hope!) that Obama will come to this same conclusion, but, of course, we'll never know. He's not exactly going to hold a press conference to tell us that he's banned Twilight from his house because of it's jacked up gender politics. But he should, because some of us now are really concerned about his parenting, even though it's really none of our business.

Michelle Obama, too, is having some trouble in the public parenting department. Some object to her wasting her Ivy League education and law degree by becoming Mom-in-Chief rather than...actually, I don't know what else people expect her to be doing. She's soon-to-be First Lady, which, despite what Hilary Clinton would have you believe, is not actually a real job. But this too is a private parenting decision being made in public. The Obamas have clearly decided that Barack Obama will dedicate his life to public service and that Michelle Obama will do the heavy lifting in terms of parenting. In Chicago, with the amazing support system she built around her, she was able to have a high-profile, high-powered career and be a very hands-on parent to two young daughters. That support system isn't following them to Chicago, but those children still need taking care of. It makes perfect sense that Michelle Obama would spend this first year at least making sure her children are okay. I don't envy her having to juggle being everyone's symbol contemporary womanhood (there's no way to live up to everyone's expectations) with being an actual mother to real children, all while smiling pretty for the cameras.

You know you're being raised in a feminist community when...

2008-11-11T16:58:00.003-05:00

Here's a recent conversation with Frances:

Frances: What's Aunt T's last name?

Me: Green

Frances: Isn't that Uncle Houston's last name?

Me: Yeah, honey. They have the same last name.

Frances: (sincerely curious) How did that happen?

Me: Well, some women change their name and take their husband's last name when they get married.

Frances: (completely incredulous) Really?

In the circle of adult women she interacts with regularly, there are no women who share their husbands' last names. In fact, not changing your name is such a regular occurence in our social circle that it's easy to forget that we are the ones who are doing something out of the ordinary. As Frances gets older and starts to interact more and more with people and institutions that don't have anything at all to do with us, we are reminded more and more that the decisions we have made in our own lives and in our parenting are very deliberate and, some times, quite at odds with those we love and thos we come into frequent contact with. The name change thing is minor in this regard, but something like not insisting that she preface a grown-up's name with "Miss" or "Mister" is a big deal, especially when we are back home or at church. I have become so adept at moving between worlds (I of course always address my elders at church as "Miss" or "Mister") that I forget that this is a skill I learned. I sometimes fear that we aren't doing a good job of teaching Frances that skill.

Promise of My Great Grandmother

2008-11-10T11:16:00.003-05:00

Here's an excerpt of the essay I wrote for the Post & Courier:

When I watched Barack Obama's election night speech, I watched as any other American. I was heartened by the multiracial crowd in Grant Park, a crowd that looks like the America I live in. I was inspired by our ability to come together across gender, racial, sexual, class, geographic, educational and religious divides for the common good. I felt proud as I witnessed Obama's humility, as he declared this a victory for the people of the United States and reiterated his desire to serve us, not just lead us.

But, if I'm being honest, I also watched as a black woman. I can't even begin to describe the joy I feel that little black boys have in Obama a model of black masculinity that has nothing to do with machismo or athletic prowess and everything to do with intelligence and moral resolve; or that our next first lady looks like the women who raised me; or that for the last 21 months the Obama family has made black love rather than black pathology front-page news.

Read the rest at the Post & Courier

Voting

2008-11-04T13:35:00.002-05:00

Forgive the long absence. I've been thinking about how to get this blog back to afrogeek parenting and way from political rants (though they do have their uses), but this election has been all-consuming.

This morning Frances and I got up before the sun to stand in line and vote for Barack Obama. I think maybe Frances was more excited than I was. She kept reminding me that we said she could stay up late to watch election returns. She was giddy as she pressed the blinking vote button.

Frances's enthusiasm about this election and the death of Obama's grandmother has me thinking about my own great-grandmother who used to deliver regular lectures about the importance of voting. We'd be pulling weeds in her garden (a chore I absolutely detested and that she seemed all too eager to have me perform) and she'd be telling me about all the people who literally died so that I can vote. She never wanted to hear that I skipped out on any opportunity to participate in the democratic process. She lived just down the road from another great-grandmother who hoped that she would live long enough to have me take her own a cruise. She'd never been on a big boat or seen the Gulf of Mexico, much a less an ocean, and believed, of all her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, that I would be the one to help her realize that dream.

It's all so corny and every black person has a million of these stories, but it's still so true. The women who helped raise me had such simple, yet profound, dreams for me and for themselves--to vote, to ride in a big boat, to marry someone I love rather than someone who can take care of me--that it seems almost unbelievable that I got to vote for a major party black candidate for president this morning. These women cleaned white people's houses all their lives and never did get to see that I grew up to be a college professor and the first black women to do a lot of things (a surprising number of things, really, considering that I was born in 1973, not 1903). But I hope they were watching somewhere this morning as I took their great-great-granddaughter into vote.

Let Me Get This Straight

2008-09-19T12:50:00.002-04:00

If I lose my job and, consequently, my health insurance and need to go on welfare or get food stamps or Medicaid to help sustain me until I get back on my feet, I'm a welfare queen sucking on the tit of the nanny state.

But, if I reorganize an entire industry around business practices even my eight year old recognizes as suspect, I can fully expect the government to swoop and save me?

What's wrong with this picture?

What Happens When Uppity Negroes Have Kids

2008-09-16T16:30:00.003-04:00

Here's a funny story: I'm shopping in target with my daughters and have found a cute shirt for the 2 year old. I hold it up to her to see if I like the color against her skin and she says, "Mommy, this will make me an uppity negro just like you." My first reaction is disbelief because clearly she couldn't have used the phrase "uppity negro" correctly in a sentence. But she did. My second reaction was hysterical laughter. Because it's funny.

Part of my job as director of African American Studies at the College of Charleston is to publicize and generate buzz about the program. I attempted to do this by having a contest to pick the new AAST t-shirt. One t-shirt says "uppity negro" on the front and as the AAST logo on the back. The other has the logo on the front and has a large black power fist and "not just in february" on the back. You can see both of them here.

Students love the uppity negro shirt and I, in fact, really want that shirt to win. I want to wear it to class and have students ask me why I'm wearing it and have people understand that calling me uppity (which I assume means that I don't know my place and I presume I am welcome where I'm not and I refuse to abide by prevailing notions of blackness--yep that's me) in no way offends me. But of course it is horribly offensive to some, particularly to black people a generation older than me (who sometimes faced violence and came to horrible ends because of their "uppity" ways), and potentially a problem for the College, especially if it is perceived as willfully insulting black people.

My third reaction to my 2 year old gleefully declaring herself an uppity negro was the thought of how horrified my mother would be. While she would not be surprised that I don't find being called uppity an insult, I am not sure she would approve of me passing that lesson along to my kids. My mother wants all her daughters to be well-behaved and walking around with a shirt that says uppity negro is the antithesis of well-behaved.

But maybe good behavior is overrated. And would that be such a horrible lesson for the 2 year old to learn?