Chapter and Verse Hannah V. Sawyerr: Writing as Liberation, Advocacy & the Power of Unheard Stories “Sometimes life just mirrors art. For me, the written word has always been a source of liberation, and that truth is lived and experienced in the characters I’ve created” – Hannah V. Sawyerr, author of All the Fighting Parts and Truth Is I picked up Hannah V Sawyerr’s debut By Stone E. Mims • 2 min read
Lifestyle Dreams, Ambitions, & White Priva-Latte: A Deep Dive into Janea West’s Grown: The Webseries “So often, Black women are expected to be perfect and polished…My series Grown allows Black women to be in their process, imperfect, messy, and all the while still worthy” – Janea West My sister and I grew up under the stern governance of Dr. Phil and Carl Winslow;our parents By Stone E. Mims • 3 min read
Lifestyle Why You Should Read The Heartbreak Years If a man is your only problem, that’s an easy fix –Minda Honey, Author of The Heartbreak Years I spent the last four years as a high school English teacher at a small arts school in the Midwest. It was a humbling experience, being responsible for the education of By Stone E. Mims • 2 min read
W.E.B. Du Bois Humanity Du Bois - Rebel With a Cause, A Conversation with Rita Coburn. “One ever feels his twoness, – an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.” – W.E.B Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, 1903 When my grandfather passed on December 15th, By Stone E. Mims • 4 min read
Humanity I Look Into the Mirror, and I See Jim Crow If I had to recommend one novel to an American confounded by the great political storm we are now in, it would be Octavia Butler’s seminal work, Kindred. Butler’s speculative narrative imagines Dana, a Black woman living in 1976, who is thrown back in time, against her will, By Stone E. Mims • 5 min read
I Just Don’t Jive With the War in Iran “We want all Black men to be exempt from military service. We believe that Black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, By Stone E. Mims • 5 min read
Photo by Darius Bashar / Unsplash Humanity Against The Genocide of Children …but our children are not ours/ nor we theirs they are future we are past - Nikki Giovanni, Always There Are The Children, 1976 Every Christmas, after dinner, but before my younger step-siblings and cousins open their presents beneath the tree, my grandmother and I play rummikub on an old, By Stone E. Mims • 8 min read
Photo by Clay Banks / Unsplash Everyday Community The Moral Decay of White America To be a Black American in 2026 is to be an ambassador to a history that your countrymen desperately want to forget, but also an oracle or prophet of the country’s trajectory. We see, before just about anyone else, where the country is headed, having already lived through its By Stone E. Mims • 8 min read
IMG_4073 Culture Sojourn of the Black Artist Where, anyway, would I go to escape? Where would a Fleeing Black Man Go?” – James Baldwin, Meeting the Man, 1970 The white supremacists’ banal screech reverberates throughout the country—Make America Great Again. The far right has seized control of the Republican Party, and the Republican Party holds a monopoly By Stone E. Mims • 12 min read
