Tyrik, Remember when we were kids and I used to take you out of Time Out after you did something you weren’t supposed to do? Ma would put you in the high chair so you could think about your actions, but I’d take you right down. I remember always feeling the need to rescue you. I felt like everyone saw you as “bad,” but I saw you as a kid who...
RACE & PLACE Love, loss, and the limits of language. by MELE GIRMA If grief is love with nowhere to go, I think it is also a language with no one to speak it. After circling the sanctuary with a curl of incense trailing behind him for what feels like hours, the priest finally nods for us to sit. I sink into my seat in relief, exhausted. I cannot believe that I am...
Editor’s note: Valentine’s Day is upon us. While some of us sanctimoniously refuse participation in yet another capitalist marketing scheme, some of y’all are in the Walgreens aisle giddily celebrating being in love with crimson hearts and Russell Stovers. But love isn’t that simple or saccharin. Many of us carry on with the work of loving...
Illustrations by Christopher Parker.Grieving inside a total institution. by E.J. June 27, 2023 ABOLITION WEEK I was not yet 27 years old, and I had already been in prison for nearly a decade, estranged from my family and friends on the outside. As a teenager, I was thrown into this world and had no choice but to learn to assimilate. Every breath I took was with the...
The soil in Mississippi is Black Belt soil in more ways than one. Fertile, fecund, dark, and nutritious, the soil is home to corn, soybeans, and cotton. Its thick-trunked forests root deep fingers into the Delta. This rich land is also Black land—independent of what any deeds say. More than one-third of the state’s population is Black, and in 1910, they owned...
For one to become a saint, by definition, [they] must have their entire lives examined, must show evidence of heroic virtue, undergo “beautification” in which that individual may be honored by a specific group or region, and then perform at least two miracles posthumously. As examined in Alice Walker’s In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens, Black...
Grief is a woman with plenty to say. This shape-shifting step-sister of ours wasn’t originally a part of the plan, but now she is coming with—no choice there. But did you know you also have the ability to shape your grief? It’s true; however, first you must be willing to meet her where she lives. In this episode of Great Grief, Nnenna Freelon asks us to...
Justin Hardiman is a self-taught freelance photographer and visual artist from Jackson, Mississippi. Justin’s artistic vision has been displayed around the world using Mississippi as a muse. His work amplifies the under-represented sides of his community and speaks to the capabilities of Mississippians and “doing more with less.” The empowerment, beauty, and...
No woman makes it through life without a sister. In grieving the death of her baby sister, Nnenna alights on all the ways Black women experience sisterhood. Through faith, family, and struggle, we inhabit a deep solidarity that allows us to hold one another close, even at the very end. This is episode two in our four-part season of Great Grief with Nnenna Freelon...
Our relationship with our hair is a complicated entanglement. It holds our history, personality, and identity. It also holds our grief. In this episode of Great Grief, Nnenna Freelon sits us down in the chair at her mother’s beauty salon, where for generations, Black women have celebrated one another and have gathered to discuss their hair—the grief over it...