One of the best films I’ve seen in recent years is a quiet indie from Argentina, released in 2018 (although I only discovered it recently, as a gift of the algorithm). Mi Mejor Amigo is[…]
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Category: Identity
Die, or Get Better?
In these days of pandemic, American democracy lies sick, burning not with fever but with fire. Every illness must come to one end or the other. Will she die, or will she get better? The[…]
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“We All Try”: Philosophical Music
Repost from 2015 Hip-hop singer Frank Ocean is well-known to march to the beat of a different drummer, and nowhere is that more apparent than in We All Try, a lovely and plaintive existential humanist[…]
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Zora Neale Hurston and the Problem of Audience
My first real understanding of the power of affinity on attention came in 9th grade. When my teacher assigned a project called “The African-European Connection,” I was enthralled by history for the first time, as[…]
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Kindred
Repost in honor of Butler’s birthday, and her selection for a Google Doodle: The late, great Octavia Butler was best-known as a rare black female superstar in a genre –science-fiction –largely dominated by white men.[…]
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Wokepedia: Women Philosophers
Third in my Wokepedia series on consciousness-raising Wikipedia edits. Women Philosophers: There’s so much common wisdom, and so many authoritative sources that claim there are few to no women philosophers, so it was great to[…]
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Django Jane’s African Beat
Perhaps to showcase her many sides, the incomparable Janelle Monae released two very different songs/videos in advance of her hotly anticipated new album, Dirty Computer. A few weeks ago I showcased her funky, bubbly, sex-drenched[…]
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I Never Meta Post I Didn’t Like
In recent years I’ve more often been the interviewer than the interviewee, but I had a chance to be on the other side of the “hot seat” recently, when I was the subject of a[…]
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Reconstructivist Art: American Born Chinese
Repost Reconstructivist Art: American Born Chinese is a critically acclaimed graphic novel by Asian American writer/illustrator Gene Yang, which centers around what at first seem like three very different narratives. The first is a superhero-themed[…]
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Here come the Challengers
First things first –everyone always hates the name that gets affixed to their generation, largely because you mainly hear it first during your teenage and young adult years, when the immediately previous generation is complaining[…]
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