How Solange and Morgan Parker Inspired Me to Write My Heroine
I thought I had to make myself smaller, quieter, in order to survive.
I am a big crier—not in public, but on the couches of close friends and in the quiet of my own bedroom, wrapped in my softest blankets. I have always been a highly emotional person, and have long felt guilty about it. As a Black woman, I live every day aware of media caricatures that often force people like me into one-dimensional stereotypes: either the sassy Black sidekick, or strong and resilient to the point of being nothing else.
Twilight
A Seat at the Table
against
A Seat at the Table
I am going to feel what I want to feel and be who I want to be, and I won’t apologize for itDon’t smile unless you want to. Sleep in. Don’t see the news. Remember what the world is like for white people.
I run the streets sometimes they run me I’m the body of the queen of my hood filled up with bad wine bad drugs mu shu pork sick beats
Keah Brown is a reader not a fighter. A lover and a writer. She has a BA in Journalism from The State University of New York at Fredonia. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Toast, Femsplain, Catapult, and Atticus Review among other publications. She laughs at her own tweets @Keah_Maria.
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