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I had the pleasure of interviewing @desireeross_ (Sophia Greenleaf) on the @owntv hit show @greenleafown for Ebony Magazine! She talks about her experience with a cast of veteran actors, impressing Oprah and more. Link is the bio! #Greenleaf returns March 15 at 10 pm on the Oprah Winfrey Network. ✨ #BlackGirlMagic

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Giving us spring in this midst of this winter sadness! @beyonce is pregnant with twins and the Beyhive is having a fit. 😂 I already can't wait to hear @thisistheread and @makael86 go off. Congrats to the Carters. 🐝🍋🍼 #Beyoncé #BlackHistoryMonth (at Women's OBGYN)

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Women, we ARE the calvary! ✌🏾️ Proud to see my sisters nationwide standing up. #WomensMarchOnWashington #WomensMarch #VivaVagina

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Thank you 😭 Eight years went by so fast. I was 17 when Obama won in 2008 and I'll never forget that night when those numbers came in. I was lying in bed with tears falling, thinking of my late grandparents who was living in Georgia throughout Jim Crow era and racism. I wish they were both alive to see this special and historic moment. No way they would've believed that a black man would become president but I was alive to see it happen in my lifetime. Thank you. We'll miss you 🇺🇸 #TheObamas #ObamaFarewell

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When I met the handsome Booboo Stewart (aka #SethClearwater) at the Twilight Convention in Detroit in 2012. He was sweet and funny. He whispered in my ear...but I don't remember what he said 😩😂 #TBT #Twilight #booboostewart (at Detroit, Michigan)

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ICYMI: I had the pleasure of interviewing singer/songwriter and #Prince protégée Jill Jones (@jonesyluv) for Huffington Post's @blackvoices. She broke her silence 5 months after @prince's death to talk about their friendship/relationship, her experience at Paisley Park in the 80s and more. 🔗 is in the BIO! Please check it out! 💜☔️ #JillJones #RIPPrince #PrinceArmy #PrinceTribute

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Me & my baby 🚙: 1978 Monte Carlo. Got to cruise around in her for a bit ☺️ I love classic cars and NO it's not for sale! "It will be mine. Oh yes! It will be mine!" #MonteCarlo #1978 #BlackGirlsLoveClassicCars

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Mr. #RalphAngel (@kofisiriboe) himself liked and shared my article. I'm so humbled and in awe right now! 😳😝👏🏾 #QueenSugar @queensugarown

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So can I put on my resume that @directher said my writing was "lovely?" Ava, thank you giving me the greatest heart attack and inspiring a creative little turtle like me. ❤️🐢 Please check out my essay about #QueenSugar and its depiction of vulnerable black men for @pastemagazine! 📎 story is in the bio! #QueenSugar @queensugarown @kofisiriboe @rutina_wesley @dawnlyen ❤️

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If I had $1 million dollars. This home is history and should be saved. 

Ivy still grows on the front of Langston Hughes’ home in Harlem. There aren’t many houses like it left in New York City. Real estate agents estimate it’s worth over $3 million.

And that’s before anyone talks about the fact that one of America’s great writers – a hero of the Harlem Renaissance – lived there for much of the 1950s and 60s, until he passed away. His typerwriter is still on a shelf.

Pressure to sell “Hughes House” is escalating. The current owner listed it for a mere $1 million a few years ago, but it didn’t sell. For now, the home sits empty. The owner doesn’t live there. No one does. Paint is chipping off the front steps.

Renee Watson thinks it’s a tragedy. That’s why she started an Indiegogo campaign to raise $150,000 to rent the home and turn it into a cultural center honoring Hughes.

“The more Harlem changes, the more I’m motivated to do something,” says Watson, a writer who lives nearby, and has watched gentrification flood in. A Whole Foods is set to open in the area early next year. Realtors predict prices will skyrocket even further.

“We – the community – must hold on to the space,” says Watson. “I feel a sense of urgency.”

So far, the initiative to save Hughes House has raised just over $25,000.

Read more

Spread the word!

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Eve’s Bayou (1997)

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Memory is a selection of images. Some elusive, others printed indelibly on the brain. Each image is like a thread. Each thread woven together to make a tapestry of intricate texture and the tapestry tells a story and the story is our past.

Eve’s Bayou (via balanced-on-a-razors-edge)

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(The Read)

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I’m Living The Post College Life I Dreaded: Jobless, Depressed & Defeated

The entire year of 2013 was of utter panic and the level of unknown, I’d be walking into in the year left of college at Eastern Michigan University. I was 22 years-old and afraid because this time of my life haven’t unfolded the way I’d imagined and hope it would. It was my first time being away from my very small town home and from the grasps of my over-protective parents. I got to be in full solitude for once and I savored it. I graduated college December 2014 with my journalism degree and excited for the newspaper internship that awaited me and the opportunity into a full-time career I thought would follow. 

In January 2016, I turned 25. Before that, I was hiding out in the closet room of a Macy’s, overwhelmed by crabby customers during the holiday season for minimum wage. Months later I would be sick to my stomach at the site of garbage I and another girl had to clean inside an automotive plant for $11 by being directed by a boss who was both immature, and profane. And I bit my tongue for the sake of a job outside my field promised to me with better pay and benefits. That promise....vaporized. 

At 26, I will be kicked off my dad’s health insurance, another pressure added to my psyche as I continue to type and retype, submit and follow-up with resumes, cover letters and applications. Dressing up for interviews, putting on a mask to charm when on the inside I want to cry and scream. I’m reminded daily that I’m jobless, by my conscious and my mother and it picks away at me. Being as introverted as I am, I spend time alone. My room is my solitude where I can escape everything and everyone. Sometimes I get depressed. Sometimes I feel like a last thought in God’s mind. My dad questions my state of mind, reminding me not to get depressed and wanting to talk to me but I don’t let him. The continuous cycle of job hunting just to be shut out for nearly 2 years have exhausted and defeated me. Everyone prays for me (which I appreciate and feel selfish for because I have prayed but often let that slip through the cracks). 

I got saved in July in the hopes of a new path in God to lead me away from this feeling but it’s still there. Just last Sunday, as I walked into church late, the pastor spoke of how we must seek validation in Jesus, not a man, woman or a job. I have felt that a job, the one I want, would make me feel better and to be honest, it will. It’s how I will get out of here for good and be on my own. I just want to be happy in my purpose, which is writing...journalism. 

My bank accounts are shot and I have nearly $30,000 in student loan debt and my freelancing is not bringing in the coins I need to help. 

My mom fusses at me to keep going. “Welcome to the real world,” she says until I want to pull my ears off and go deaf. I sleep a lot...every day. Sleeping in this point of my life has brought me much comfort and has taken me way from dealing with my thoughts and reality. Waking up in the same bedroom I’ve been in since I was 7. I’m up half of the night and I sleep into the afternoon. Sleep has become an escape and then every once in a while I feel a kick in my spirit to look for a job or write. I don’t even write as much or as often as I want to because I don’t know what to say and the scraps of paper just becomes a pile with the rest of my notes in my room. I always feel like I’m not doing enough.

I read an article on xoNecole by McKenzie Dawkins called “Unemployed With A Princeton Degree: I Learned Self Love In  A Year of Uncertainty” (http://xonecole.com/unemployed-with-a-princeton-degree-how-i-learned-self-love-in-a-year-of-uncertainty/)  and it was eerily like reading my experience from the eyes of another person. 

She wrote: “Out of college for months and still unable to land a full-time job, the wide-eyed enthusiasm I’d experienced during graduation quickly wore off.  I had a degree from Princeton University, the well-wishes of loved ones and the promises of “I know you’ll do great!” from friends and peers, but no job to show for it all.  While I kept myself busy with several internships and hobbies like dance and beauty, feelings of inadequacy grew and festered into what felt like a hole inside of me.  I withdrew from friends, worried that I’d be unable to maintain even casual conversations without bursting into tears.  I also slept a lot.  The more hours I spent sleeping, the more time I had free from the stress of not feeling good enough.  Though I still had my internships and sent out countless resumes and applications, my fire had pretty much burnt out.”

I was so moved that I tweeted her and we exchanged our feelings tweet after tweet. I read my bible to get some peace and understanding. My aunt calls me with news of companies i the city that are hiring, people pray for me, have faith in me and my talent. “I see great things happening for you” or “You’re going to make it” and I always want to ask, “How do you know?” I’m always touched but astonished that people still see this in me but at least someone does. 

I know God has something waiting for me on the other side and I try to clear out my thoughts to hear his voice. I’m still growing in my faith to take me out of depression, anxiety, and defeat. I know he sees me but I can’t take living in my childhood bedroom under the thumb of my family when I’m soon to be 26. I just want to be free

“You’ll be 30 in a few years!”

Thanks for that reminder. 

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Never would I have thought that I'd be close to her in this lifetime. She was beautiful, hilarious and moved the crowd so much (especially the men, one who's necklace of flowers she kissed to a guy giving her a long stemmed rose) that a guy threw his boxers on the stage. She held those suckas in the air and smiled 😂😂😂 @erykahbadu #Detroit #ErykahBadu #Baduizm

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The best feeling in the world is knowing that someone was positively affected by your life purpose and in return they are inspired or liberated. 💗 | Matthew 5:16

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I plan on doing a blog post about this but something miraculous happened tonight in my life: I received the Holy Ghost. I was baptized in the name of Jesus on 7/24/2016 (I chose that day because of the numbers 7 and 24 for 24/7 as a symbol to honor God constantly) and tonight, July 29, 2016 I was filled with the Holy Spirit and have become saved. The support that I received and being surrounded at that moment where I had to surrender completely and not be ashamed. To hear the cries of "Hallelujah," claps and praise surrounding me as I let God used me...speechless. Thank you Jesus. I now have a new birthday, one of the spirit. January 6, 1991 - physical birth July 29, 2016 - spiritual birth 🙌🏾 #ThankYouGod #InJesusName #SpiritualBirthday (at Greater Bible Way Temple-Bay City, MI)