One Love
Sometimes we think love only has to do with big red lips on a movie screen or particular body parts. Most of us have been socialized -- at least in this culture -- to imagine that love only appears in certain forms, is unpredictable and unavoidable (like a car wreck), instinctual and manifested only as lust or motherly hormones.I believe love is the breath in our bones, deeper than space, as multifaceted as life itself, and more amazing than rainbows. No matter how dense the darkness, the smallest candle can light the way. And nothing, nothing can erase its truth or its effect.I choose to love. In the face of all greed, ignorance and cruelty. In the face of all the

For the Men at J.B. Evans Correctional Center
I know I'm supposed to be thinking warm, fuzzy thoughts tonight as I look forward to sitting around a table full of food tomorrow with people I love. And I am, I assure you, well thankful for many things. I'm quite fortunate, indeed, even to be alive, given the life I've lived and the choices I've made while I lived it.

Reading, Writing, 'Rithmetic and Racism
As some of My Faithful Readers know, one of the things I think a lot about and have focused on fairly continually since I arrived in Louisiana is what's happening in this parish’s public schools where children of color are concerned. I realize – and mention often – that White Supremacy is the defa

Youth Doing Life Without Parole
When I was serving as a substance abuse counselor in a maximum security women's penitentiary in Florida, I met two young women who had been sentenced to life in prison as adolescents, one of them at fifteen. One had been part of a car-jacking that went crazy when another girl shot the driver. The other had been on th

I Got the Blues
I've been ranting about the socially-constructed, political notion of race in four of my classes over the past week and talking about rape in the other one. I only got two sentences into my lecture last Thursday before a White male student leapt up, grabbed his books and stomped out. During this same week, my dog developed a fixation on my presence so strong that he couldn't bear to be without me for even a short time, resulting in his chewing up a whole bunch of stuff and ultimately necessitating my breaking my own heart by giving him away to avoid caging him whenever I'm gone -- something I won't do. So now, of course, I'm alone with a brain full of sadness, convinced that I'm go