Musings“Are you boycotting Netflix?” “What?” “Netflix. Mo’Nique said we should all boycott Netflix.” It was now 5am CAT and I could only stare at my phone and wonder what had happened 8 hours prior EST to illicit this text from my sister. I know her well enough to know that her query was dripping with […]
MusingsI’m a (not so) secret super fan of the FOKN Bois, the oddly paired rap duo from Ghana. It’s often tempting to invoke parallels between the members of this group and the now-defunct Outkast, but it’s even wiser to refrain from that temptation. Just like Andre and Big Boi, M3nsa and Wanlov are – and […]
Say what??“If it isn’t intentional, then it isn’t racism.” Those are the words of a woman who would most likely describe herself as ‘color blind’, if not an ally to people marginalized, stigmatized and often downright oppressed in majority white societies. Those words incited shock, disbelief and resignation in circles of people of color all over […]
GH2013It must be overwhelming to live as a heterosexual male in Ghana. Imagine being told – explicitly or not – that no matter how difficult your life may be, no matter how many disappointments you may suffer, at least you are not a woman. Women are not “co-equals” to men. Women have been cursed since […]
Motherhood“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job […]
“We always had a problem with him and pools. The people who own the pool upstairs said they caught him walking around it when I already told him not to. I gave him a hiding. He said he wouldn’t do it again. And then just 5 days later, he came back to report to me […]
Do you make New Year resolutions? I don’t. Not any more. I don’t even make goals. Murphy’s Law operates in my life with the efficiency of a bicycle and the ferocity of Eddy Merckx on the pedals. Whether horrific or splendid, every event in my life is a surprise. It’s all very New Age – […]
The year is drawing to a close and we are in the homestretch! 2018 is peering back at us over the horizon. 2017 has been a bizarre year, much of it in a good way. After the horrors that 2016 wrought upon us, it was good to catch some semblance of a breather over these […]
Watching holiday movies was never a big part of my family’s Christmas rituals, growing up. We watched A Charlie Brown Christmas, Frosty the Snowman and those early claymation flicks featuring Rudolph and Jack Frost, but that was it. Big blockbuster ‘must watch’ holiday classics like A Christmas Story, Miracle on 34th Street and It’s A […]
Is your little man tired of receiving khakis, hoodies and socks for Christmas? Has exhaustion from exerting yourself all year depleted your creative capacity? Do you want him – like his father- to just be grateful for the gift of refined cotton?? If the title of this post caused your pulse to quicken, knowing that […]
Ok guys. I KNOW it seems like this is the year where I’ve deliberately fallen into stuff (i.e. on my back being dry humped in a DC club by a random stranger or becoming the sole provider of reusable grocery totes for a local deli for a time), but I swear to you that these […]
‘Bullying’ isn’t just a 21st century buzzword that is strewn about like bunting at a state fair – it’s a real social scourge that affects millions of children worldwide, every day. Bullying has measurable and serious consequences, including diminished self-esteem, depression and suicide. It’s not something any one of us should take lightly, either as […]
Everyone thinks self-publishing – or any independent creative work – is sexy. There’s this aura of grittiness, the allure of the idea of that you can grind your way to the top, the crowning achievement being that indelible interview on Ellen or Access Hollywood. It’s not just spectators who harbor this delusion; we artists and […]
Mo nighean donn (Gaelic). Translation: My brown haired lass You’d have to be a fan of the series ‘Outlander’ to truly appreciate what I’ve done with the title of this post. And the answer to your unasked question is, yes. Yes, I’m right proud of myself. It’s a braw thing I’ve done there. So! Prince […]
I suppose I should’ve been ready for it. It was a Monday afternoon, after all. These sorts of things only happen during queer times. Like when the 13th of the month falls on a Friday, when the moon is full during its lunar cycle, and – of course – Mondays. I was so relieved that […]
Do you remember your early middle school crushes? Did you ever play that game when you wrote your name and substituted your surname for that of the class prefect you only dared to admire from afar, fantasizing about the day you would be wed? I did. And it was fun…until it actually mattered. For 27 […]
I’ve been sitting on this post for a week or better. The subject matter is one that people like myself – empaths – would much rather leave to our darkest imaginations than speak about, the risk being that the undesired event may come to pass. But if you’ve lived a day over 20, you know […]
It’s not the kind of message I was expecting to receive to early in the morning, particularly not from the individual in question. He is a casual (and one of my more pleasant) acquaintances on social media. Our conversation has run the gamut from history, to music, to women’s issues…but never this. “A friend of […]
Idolatry: extreme admiration, love, or reverence for something or someone. A fetishism. It’s a widely held belief that the wedding industry is the only viable, locally sustained industry in the Ghana. Oil and gas is still somewhat nascent and has yet to yield all of the promised gains that were dangled in front of […]
In just four short months I will turn 40. I mention the coming of this milestone with pride and eagerly await its coming. Like 16 and 25, 40 is a one of those benchmark birthdays that heralds a shift in a woman’s life. For one thing, I will have achieved authentic ‘Auntie’ status owing to […]
There was an article making the rounds on social media last week querying why African judges still wear wigs 50 years after the end of colonization. The question remains a post-colonial conundrum: What is so appealing about the trappings of a judicial system that robbed an entire continent of its freedoms and imposed foreign laws […]