Writing

The elegiac prose of Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” (1978) reads like a constitution. “Girl” is an ominous initiation into Caribbean culture, steeping its reader in the prescriptive behaviors befitting a respectable woman. Told through a mother-daughter relationship, Girl’s narrative suffocates where it admonishes, liberates where it is subversive. “[T]his is how you iron your father’s khaki pants so that they don’t have a crease; this is how you grow okra…” a mother’s instructions are passed down like blood, conditioning girl to a woman’s role.

I am not me, I tell her outside an elevated train station. The familiar scent of pizza and Marlboro Lights wafting up the steps. The air is quick with winter. I am trembling beneath my color-blocked coat. My cheeks flush rosewood. We see her from the door. My mother is a monolith.

I’ve had it up to here with

The way I don’t know what was on the television while you were dying

If you don’t get your

And I didn’t listen when you asked me to lie next to you.

I never listened.

You never said how it hurt, or who did it, or why.

You lived at the edge of your bed and drank.

And Benson and Hedges Ultra Lights.

When I saw Tank and the Bangas headline at the Apollo Theater, I saw a woman like myself—Black, voluptuous, creative—commanding center stage with her nine-piece band. Her bun stood half-a-foot tall and glittered with pearls. Her fuzzy, green cape cascaded around her shoulders. When she got serious, she hung her floral scarf on her microphone. A large, green balloon floated beside her head like a bright idea.

“Sometimes,” she said, “a Black woman needs to save herself.”

I broke my hip when I was 11. Depressed and lonely, I made a ritual out of visiting the Brighton Beach Public Library. I would make a pan of brownies, roll down Ocean Parkway, and get lost in the corner where the library kept the black literature. My reading options were limited, but since the library had air conditioning and my wheelchair fit through the door, I learned to take my victories when they came.

News of University President Lawrence Bacow's appointment to U.S. President Barack Obama's Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) was disseminated by Tufts E-News on March 2, 2010. Established by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, the purpose of this advisory committee is to support the advancement of these institutions that have been invaluable to the progress of American society.