The Legality of Love
I remember when I learned there is a syntax to love.
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Posts Tagged: police
Arrest Record
A Black boy, no matter how young, was not a child. He was a future criminal.
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Protocol: Bait/Switch
What is the protocol for dealing with civilians? What is the protocol for dealing with the police?
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ENOUGH: Handing Back the Shame
A Rumpus series of work by women and non-binary writers that engages with rape culture, sexual assault, and domestic violence.
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Rumpus Exclusive: “Wisdom”
“The devil has made a fool of you, but do you know Wisdom is at work, too?”
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Ghostly Woman
I had never lived in a real haunted house. I didn’t know what any of the rules were. Could her presence cause physical harm?
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: The Savage Mind, Pt. 2
There isn’t even a discussion. There aren’t any words. You just start swinging—the building is a fence, your cousins are a fence. The two of you are surrounded. There’s no escape for either of you.
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: The Savage Mind, Pt. 1
The violence came in and we were not just in danger of being victims of it. We were in danger of being violent ourselves.
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The Storming Bohemian Punks the Muse #21: Not Yesterday’s Demonstrations
1972: War was waging in Vietnam and kids were coming home in boxes. Hippes and yippies went clean for Gene McCarthy, but George McGovern won the democratic nomination. Tricky Dick Nixon was the one for the Republicans and the so-called Silent Majority. I was a sixteen-year-old runaway revolutionary of peace and love, living in a commune, […]
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Multitudes: Policing Black Art
Editors and producers skin my art and wrap my entire face with it, asking me to write and read in Black face.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Salt
A flash-fire covered the horizon all around and behind her, and my mother glowed genuine blue. I saw her skeleton, or maybe her white-hot soul. Something flew up and around our heads.
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Wa
It’s about greed; it’s about taking only the best part of things, the cream off the top, the fat. And this taking of the fat has reached a crisis point in America—a critical mass, if you will.
...moreSong of the Day: “Louder Than A Bomb”
“Rhythm is the rebel,” Chuck D raps on “Louder Than A Bomb,” one of many outstanding tracks from Public Enemy’s touchstone 1988 record, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. Of all the controversial and heartfelt statements made on this widely acclaimed and influential album, this is perhaps the most telling, as DJ […]
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Woman at Standing Rock
I think back and then here, where I can only think of beasts with stains: oil and blood. They have become as familiar as an oil-stained cloth in a garage, or the things we ignore, just there in the light.
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Missing Lorraine
I guess I was somewhat relieved that my aunt realized she wouldn’t survive another day in her apartment, and I cautiously believed that she did want to live, at least for the next ninety days.
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Boyz n the Hood, Chi-Raq, and America 2016
And while the faces and nomenclature between these historically discrete agents of change differ, the one governing commonality remains the same: unfettered gun ownership and correlative violence play a pivotal role.
...moreThe Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Solmaz Sharif
Solmaz Sharif discusses her new collection Look, the difference between nearness and similarity, and the level of ownership we have over stories.
...moreWeekly Geekery
New York Times readers who ignore The Economist: Danger, groupthink ahead. Data suggests police de-escalation can work. Goats have feelings, too. (Sheep, not so much.) Babies brainwash you with their cuteness. If the Ghostbusters need props, who you gonna call? MIT professors!
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Not an Alcoholic
Maybe I wasn’t an alcoholic like my father. Maybe I was an alcoholic like… me.
...moreDriving While Black in America
At The Toast, Katrina Otuonye discusses the inner pain and conflict of being unjustly stopped by the police as a black woman: My rule-abiding politeness, my inner drive to keep the peace, my outwardly even temper, none of these things will necessarily save me. I won’t get to hide behind my Master’s degree in a […]
...moreThis Week in Short Fiction
This is supposed to be a story. This is the first sentence of “The Alive Sister,” a powerful new work of flash fiction by Megan Giddings published at The Offing on Monday. In it, two little black girls are playing an imaginary game with foam bats in a park. Someone calls the police. The girls […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Cote Smith
Cote Smith talks about his debut novel, Hurt People, growing up in a prison town, using rejection as motivation, and brotherly love.
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He Doth Protest Too Much
I’ve begun to question my place in society, my place in a country that wants me to remain silent. Mostly, I question my choice to remain silent.
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Making a Murderer and “Bad” Families
There were “good” families and “bad” families, and even I, an outsider, was quickly apprised of which was which.
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The Rumpus Interview with Sunil Yapa
Sunil Yapa discusses his debut novel, Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist, radical empathy, growing up surrounded by politics, and losing the first draft of his novel in Chile.
...moreWeekly Geekery
Hackers are taking down the police. Should we regulate the most addictive substance known to humans aka the Internet? The dark side of Silicon Valley. The food legacy of the great cranberry scare.
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I’ll Fly Away: Notes on Economy Class Citizenship
I want to break from a continued and systematic white supremacy so pervasive it is entrenched in the vernacular I use to express myself.
...moreYou Are Not Like Other Children
You are not like the other children. You can’t get into the same juvenile mischief your white friends get into. You represent something more than yourself and your family when you are outside this house. You will have to be twice as good as other people to be as successful as them. Remember that the […]
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