A Multi-Modal Study of Exquisite Blackness: Krista Franklin’s Too Much Midnight
In Franklin’s telling, we are not just born, but fervent in our existence.
...more
Posts Tagged: black women
Exorcising Whiteness: Khalisa Rae’s Ghost in a Black Girl’s Throat
Rae presents America as seen through Black girls’ eyes, experienced by our bodies.
...more
Black Motherhood as Literary Creation: Talking with Kaitlyn Greenidge
Kaitlyn Greenidge discusses her new novel, LIBERTIE.
...more
On Resilience, Tender Rituals, and Responsible Love: Talking with Kiese Laymon
Kiese Laymon discusses the revised HOW TO SLOWLY KILL YOURSELF AND OTHERS IN AMERICA.
...more
Belonging Is Everything: Talking with Georgina Lawton
Georgina Lawton discusses her debut memoir, RACELESS.
...more
Complicating Unhelpful Binaries: Talking with Deesha Philyaw
Deesha Philyaw discusses her debut story collection, THE SECRET LIVES OF CHURCH LADIES.
...more
Freedom Knows Who We Are: Talking with Kelly Harris-DeBerry
Kelly Harris-DeBerry discusses her debut poetry collection, FREEDOM KNOWS MY NAME.
...more
Stories without Veils: Talking with Athena Dixon
Athena Dixon discusses her debut memoir-in-essays, THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING WOMAN.
...more
Identity as a Hall of Mirrors: Descent by Lauren Russell
This book is a marriage of the real world and the imagination, the nexus of nonfiction and fiction.
...more
Against Respectability: A Conversation with Raven Leilani
Raven Leilani discusses her debut novel, LUSTER.
...more
Hybrid by Nature: A Conversation with Tara Campbell
Tara Campbell discusses her new book, POLITICAL AF: A RAGE COLLECTION.
...more
Bald-headed Muthaf*cker
Healing is slow. Fast. Slow again.
...more
On Being Seen by Toni Morrison
It’s never too late to read Toni Morrison for the first time.
...more
Consider Us Women: A Conversation with Kwoya Fagin Maples
Kwoya Fagin Maples discusses her poetry collection, MEND.
...more
Rumpus Exclusive: “Dark Girls”
When I was born I came out looking just like them.
...more
Slippery and Dark and Brilliant: A Conversation with Morgan Parker
Morgan Parker discusses her newest collection, MAGICAL NEGRO.
...more
VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Renee Simms
Renee Simms discusses her debut collection, Meet Behind Mars, leaving law to become a writer, and writing through major life changes.
...more
VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Morgan Jerkins
Morgan Jerkins discusses This Will Be My Undoing, getting her start on the Internet, and why her collection of linked personal essays isn’t just another Millennial read.
...more
To Look for America: A Road Trip, a Soundtrack
One thing I was taught about travel—because my father is a black man born in Alabama in 1950—was that there are safe places for black people to go and places that aren’t as safe.
...more
VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Brooke C. Obie
Brooke C. Obie discusses the historical basis for her debut novel, Book of Addis, writing to dismantle white supremacy, and why Black speculative fiction is integral to her survival.
...more
The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Nikki Wallschlaeger
Nikki Wallschlaeger discusses her new collection Crawlspace, why she chose to work with the sonnet form, and how segregation in American never ended.
...more
VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Yona Harvey
Yona Harvey talks about her path to becoming a poet, Winnie Mandela as an artistic inspiration, and what it means to write more publicly.
...moreThis Week in Trumplandia
Welcome to This Week in Trumplandia. Check in with us every Thursday for a weekly roundup of the most pertinent content on our country, which is currently spiraling down a crappy toilet drain. You owe it to yourself, your communities, and your humanity to contribute whatever you can, even if it is just awareness of […]
...more
VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Tara Betts
Tara Betts discusses her newest collection, Break the Habit, the burden placed on black women artists to be both artist and activist, and why writing is rooted in identity.
...more
The Sunday Rumpus Interview: A Roundtable on Writing, Editing, and Race
With Lisa Factora-Borchers, Patrice Gopo, Jennifer Niesslein, Tamiko Nimura, and Deesha Philyaw.
...more
Gotta Go Gotta Flow by Patricia Smith and Michael Abramson
Alicia Swiz reviews Gotta Go Gotta Flow by Patricia Smith and Michael Abramson.
...moreA Running Start
Over at The Offing, Linda Chavers pens an important letter to “black girls everywhere”: I am giving you the prologue. You must go forward accepting and understanding that no one will ever do it as well as you do, and no one will ever tell you that you do it better than anybody else.
...moreWho Are You Writing For?
In the American imagination the black woman, whether light skinned or dark, is already a sexualized entity, a character upon which so many stereotypes are projected. But as a black woman writing these characters, I need to write beyond the stereotypes, expose their idiocy one page at a time. Morgan Jerkins writes about the complications […]
...moreRepresenting Black Women’s Stories
Why do black characters, in particular, black women of color, have to have some curated, Huxtable-like experience? Why can’t black women, like every other human on earth, be sexual, nerdy, outrageous, or flawed? Why aren’t we allowed to share our stories of affairs, unrequited love, career failures and sexual diversity on camera? For Blavity, Kayla […]
...more
The Saturday Rumpus Interview: Josie Pickens
Josie Pickens talks about building relationships through blogging, changing the narrative around black women in America, and eradicating silence through storytelling.
...more