Tag: deep lit

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what's lit

How Disney’s Original ‘The Little Mermaid’ Perpetuated the White Mermaid Image

Chloe x Halle Twitter

Disney’s 1989 animated interpretation of The Little Mermaid brought the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale alive through Ariel with her manufactured White beauty that has become the trademark for mermaid images. But one book made me realize mermaids can be Black and any other complexion our imaginations want us to see.

It was Sukey and the Mermaid written by Robert D. San Souci and illustrated by Brian Pinkney. Sukey is forced to work on the farm by her stepfather, but she befriends a Black mermaid, Mama Jo, who gives her hope her life can be better. I loved the story, reread the book over and over. The mermaid in this story was Black and older with long silvery strands and an undersea attire that looked like armor made of gold. Ariel’s juvenescence may have enhanced her magic, but Mama Jo possessed a more sage magic, a majestic presence.

Black mermaids conquered conversation on July 3 at the news of Halle Bailey from Chloe x Halle and Freeform’s Grown-ish nabbing the part of Ariel in the Disney live action remake. The four-day Fourth of July weekend prolonged the uproar on social media where supporters who applauded a Black Ariel clashed with those who slammed a Black Ariel with the argument she can only be White due to the author’s Danish roots.

Since I’ve been working on a young adult novel about Black girls cosplaying as nightclub mermaids, I’ve noticed Disney’s imagery has even warped the marketplace for mermaid-centric merchandise, further emphasizing these mythical creatures can only be accepted as White.

Sukey and the Mermaid fell into my hands after my Ariel doll disappeared. Ariel, with her ketchup red hair and shimmery purple bra and green fin, was found under the Christmas tree when I was five-years-old. I would stick her under the faucet for her to swim in the ocean I created in the sink, put her beside my head at night in bed. Then she went missing.

Me and Ariel on Christmas before she met her untimely demise.

Years later, I learned Ariel was tossed in the trash. My mother despised the attention the only White doll she would ever buy me received over my Black dolls. The Black doll experiment conducted by psychologists Dr. Kenneth Clark and Dr. Mamie Clark in the 1940s found the participating Black children preferred White dolls and used more positive adjectives to describe them. This informed how my mother would raise my sister and me with only Black dolls since she knew a time when she could only get White dolls.

But she caved with Ariel, since I was obsessed with that mermaid. Ariel topped two birthday cakes in a row and became an epic Halloween costume complete with the shimmery green fin. Eventually Ariel was replaced by book mermaid Mama Jo and my Disney obsession moved on to brown-skinned Jasmine in Aladdin.

The controversy around Halle’s casting will hopefully die down as we accept a new image of a mermaid who could be reflected in more stories, products, and images for girls and women of various complexions.

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experiences

Busy Philipps Says Memoir Prepared Her for Sharing Abortion Story

Author-actress Busy Philipps and author-CEO Jaclyn Johnson hold a fireside chat at Aerie REALtreat at Rolling Greens Nursery in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday, June 8, 2019 / she lit

Actress-author Busy Philipps shared how her 2018 published memoir inspired her to share a personal story on TV at the Aerie REALtreat conference in downtown Los Angeles Saturday afternoon.

Arriving from an earlier event with BookSparks in conversation with Taylor Jenkins Reid and Abdi Nazemian in Hollywood, the This Will Only Hurt a Little memoirist spoke to about 150 attendees at a fireside chat at Rolling Greens Nursery in the Arts District with Work Party author and Create & Cultivate CEO Jaclyn Johnson about how her recently canceled late night talk show was another vehicle to share her abortion story. Though she told the story in her book, Busy said she hadn’t shared it publicly until last month in response to the Georgia abortion bill.

“It’s all crazy, but writing about it in my book prepared me for when the extreme abortion bans happened,” she said. “First of all, the Georgia ban was passed the Monday after I had found out that my show was canceled. We didn’t tell people for five weeks, so I knew my show was canceled, and that’s when the Georgia ban was passed through their Senate, but the governor hadn’t signed it in yet.

“So my initial feeling was that I wanted to do it that day. However, my husband and I talked about it, and he said, ‘I don’t want E! to think you’re going on television to talk about your abortion in some way because they canceled your show’… I just didn’t want any of the message to be convoluted.”

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed the Living Infants Fairness and Equality (LIFE) Act, also known as the “heartbeat bill” on May 7. That same day, Busy aired her story on Busy Tonight, in which she said she didn’t let the network know about her decision to share her story because she felt it would lessen the potency or stop the story from being told. She said the show submitted a full script, which she wrote, while she personally placed it in the teleprompter, so the weight of the impact would be all on her. Her last show aired May 16.

Last Tuesday, she was a guest speaker at the “Threats to Reproductive Rights in America” House Judiciary Committee hearing.

“The timing of things with being able to go testify at the House Judiciary Committee; I wouldn’t have been able to do if my show on E! that 40 people watched was still on,” Busy quipped.

Busy is an #AerieREAL role model. Aerie is the intimate apparel lifestyle offshoot of American Eagle Outfitters. In partnership with Create & Cultivate (disclosure: I’m an insider), the event focused on tapping into women’s power for entrepreneurial success.

Regardless of getting an abortion at 15 years old, Busy said she’s felt the emotional toll on making the decision.

“It’s something I had never spoken about publicly, but I held a great deal of shame about for many many years,” she said. “When I wrote my memoir, I knew I wanted to talk about it. But I knew that it would be difficult for my family. I felt very strongly in sharing the whole story.”

She said her talk show was a creative vehicle for storytelling expression and hopes it can be revived via another outlet.

“It speaks to the other thing which was why I wanted even to do a late night talk show in the first place,” she said. “We know that diversity and representation in the media of all kinds makes a difference in our media and having a female voice in late night television is important, especially when our country is dealing with lots of different issues that affect women.”

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what's lit

Mystery Novelist Attica Locke Lends Writing Talent to Netflix’s ‘When They See Us’

Five teens from Harlem become trapped in a nightmare when they're falsely accused of a brutal attack in Central Park. Based on a true story. / Netflix

Acclaimed novelist Attica Locke joined a National Association of Black Journalists Los Angeles panel Wednesday in Hollywood along with actors Niecy Nash and Blair Underwood for their new Netflix series When They See Us, featuring the true-life stories of the boys who had become known as the Central Park Five.

Based in Los Angeles, Attica has written award-winning novels The Cutting Season, Pleasantville, Black Water Rising, and Bluebird, Bluebird, which was picked up by FX in 2017 for a TV series. A sequel titled Heaven, My Home will be out in September.

Attica Locke / Mel Melcon, Los Angeles Times

As a writer and producer, Attica said the Ava DuVernay project, which includes Oprah and Robert DeNiro as producers, was the highest outlet for her talent with the social justice aspect. The four-episode series available on Netflix this weekend surrounds the New York City case convicting five teenage African American and Latino boys over the rape of a white investment banker who received the moniker of Central Park Jogger. The 1989 event and the subsequent trials revived racial tensions within the city and country, infamously including an $85,000 New York Times ad from Donald Trump calling for the death penalty for the boys. The woman, who was later revealed to be Trisha Meili in a 2004 memoir, survived the attack though still experiences cognitive difficulties.

The case is now examined by journalism scholars who find the media coverage 30 years ago had a racial tinge with most articles never saying these boys—Antron McCray, 15, Kevin Richardson, 15, Yusef Salaam, 15, Raymond Santana, 14, and Korey Wise, 16—”allegedly” committed the crime, a necessarily placed word to let the masses know their innocence was probable. Terms such as “wolf pack” and “wilding” dominated headlines along with “bloodthirsty,” “animals,” “savages” and “human mutations,” according to the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit journalism and research organization. It added newspaper columnists such as New York Post’s Pete Hamill wrote the teens hailed “from a world of crack, welfare, guns, knives, indifference and ignorance…a land with no fathers…to smash, hurt, rob, stomp, rape. The enemies were rich. The enemies were white.”

In 2002, after the boys became men in prison from sentences ranging from 6 to 13 years, convicted murderer and rapist Matias Reyes admitted to the rape. His DNA matched the samples collected from the crime scene, and detectives said he knew details about the crime that was never released to the public. He’s serving a life sentence.

The next year, the five wrongfully convicted men filed a civil lawsuit against New York City for malicious prosecution, racial discrimination, and emotional distress. The charges against them were vacated, and they eventually received a $41 million settlement in 2014.

Reams of articles from the time were prepared by the When They See Us staff for the actors to know the real people they will play on screen, the panel said. Attica added that watching the actual “confession” videotapes from the boys, who say they were coerced into those confessions for a crime they didn’t commit, “fucked her up.” She said it was difficult to watch the children without their parents saying they were a part of the crime when their statements contradicted each other. Niecy brought up in the discussion that mental health hotlines were available to the cast and staff over the emotionally heavy material, adding she had never seen an emphasis of self-care on a production set.

In November, Attica led a social media campaign against the Mystery Writers of America’s decision to bestow a lifetime achievement award to Linda Fairstein, the Central Park Five prosecutor who pushed for the convictions of the teens and eventually became a successful mystery novelist. The literary organization rescinded the award for the first time in its history after it said many members were also against the decision.

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film reviews

‘The Sun Is Also a Star’ Sees Mediocre Reviews: Is Multicultural YA Viable on Silver Screen?

Nicola Yoon’s best-selling young adult romance The Sun Is Also A Star transformed into a movie this past weekend, but the critics didn’t seem to love it. Now with a score of 52% on Rotten Tomatoes, this story about interracial love bombed at the box office, so how does that impact other multicultural YA novels blossoming into films?

So far, the movie grossed $2.5 million, significantly below the anticipated $6 million to $12 million from 2,100 theaters, according to Variety. Deadline Hollywood said the film’s ultimate box office return on its $9 million production budget looks dismal with even the author’s debut novel-turned-movie Everything, Everything opening at $11.7M in 2017 and finishing with almost $62 million globally.

The movie follows the novel well with Natasha Kingsley (Yara Shahidi of Grown-ish) heading to an immigration lawyer to save her family from deportation scheduled for the next day when she bumps into Daniel Bae (Charles Melton of Riverdale), who believes their meeting is kismet. As science-minded Natasha fights Daniel’s determination to make her believe in love and fall in love with him, they’re savoring every moment they can together in New York City. With the cinematography expertly showcasing the city, the marshmallow fluffiness of love that readers adored falters a bit onscreen.

And reviewers emphasized that. Entertainment Weekly gave the movie a C while it gave the book in 2016 an A with having the exclusive of the cover reveal. Separate reviewers graded the film and book, but it’s jarring to see such variations for the same media outlet.

The New York Times editors added the book to its curated top children’s books of 2016. “The story and its trappings feel a little generic, the dialogue studiously bland and the characters and their problems curiously weightless, in spite of gestures in the direction of real-world issues,” A.O. Scott wrote in the film review. And “generic” pops up in the headline for the review as well.

Potential moviegoers also saw casting issues with both stars being biracial when Natasha and Daniel were not in the story. Yara is half-black, half-Iranian when Natasha is fully Jamaican, a contrast visible in the film where the actors representing Natasha’s family have a darker complexion. Charles is half-white, half-Korean when Daniel is fully Korean, another contrast visible with the actors playing his family look fully East Asian as his attractiveness is mentioned. It’s the same issue that reared its head in the casting of Nick Young’s character in Crazy Rich Asians.

How this successful novel became an unsuccessful film may not influence future multicultural YA adaptations, but the magic of a book is hard to capture, and casting and script-writing obviously plays a role in the high-profile critiques and bringing the key audience into theaters.

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experiences

Free Black Women’s Library Los Angeles Holds Launch Party in Slauson Community

Asha Grant, founder of The Free Black Women's Library Los Angeles, at the launch party on April 27, 2019.

Free Black Women’s Library celebrated its Los Angeles launch Saturday night at the Hilltop Coffee & Kitchen on Slauson Avenue in the View Park-Windsor Hills neighborhood with the performances by eight Black female poets.

The featured local poets were Amoni Thompson-Jones, bridgette bianca, Camari Carter, Iman Milner, Jessica Gallion aka YELLAWOMAN, Nadia Hunter Bey, Shakira Peterson, and Shonda Buchanan.

The party started with a networking hour for attendees to bond over literary happenings in the coffeehouse that’s quickly becoming a haven for similar events. A live artist, Brittney Price, painted a piece she later donated to the cause. Quotes were pasted on the glass from Black women writers such as bell hooks, Octavia Butler, Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, and Ntozake Shange. Bouquets of flowers sat on the tables with most attendees sitting in seats in front of the window that provided a backdrop of the sunset with painted skies for the poets as they recited their melodies.

As each poet spilled her soul to the crowd, applause naturally erupted. The poems magnified the Black female experience from different perspectives. For example, bridgette bianca and Camari Carter mentioned the death of six adopted Black children killed by their White lesbian mothers where one drove their SUV over the cliff in Mendocino County, a story forgotten in the constantly ticking news cycle. YELLAWOMAN lyrically spoke about her experience as a light-skinned woman with Louisiana roots while Shonda Buchanan played a drum and chanted a song before her poetry to honor her African-American and American-Indian roots.

The library’s goal is to compensate Black women for their artistry while collecting #300BlackWomenBooks, or 300 books authored by Black women, by June. Donations will be accepted at subsequent events and this address: 5350 Wilshire Blvd P.O. Box #36618 Los Angeles, CA 90036.

The original branch of the library was created in 2015 by Ola Ronke Akinmowo in Brooklyn, New York, the same year and place where Well-Read Black Girl began. The idea is to provide “a free, feminist pop-up library and book swap with Black women writers at the center,” as its mission states.

Asha Grant, the director of the Free Black Women’s Library LA, was the mistress of ceremonies at the launch party. She said she recently moved back to the LA area and wanted to bring Akinmowo’s mission here.

The next event has not been announced yet but Grant said it will involve interactive journaling with sitting on pillows, a more relaxed atmosphere compared to the party.

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film reviews

How the Introverted Black Writer Girl Became Visible in ‘Poetic Justice’

Alone, all alone. Nobody, but nobody can make it out here alone.

Poetic Justice brought the modern literary black woman to film in 1993 when John Singleton, the Oscar-nominated director, wrote it and had pop performer Janet Jackson breathe life into the role. The film deserves a spotlight for its innovation at the time with Hollywood reflecting on the works of Singleton, who died at 51 today.

Justice (Janet Jackson), a young black woman living in South Central LA, is reeling from the murder of her fresh-out-of-jail boyfriend at a drive-in theater. Depressed, Justice adjusts to her loneliness and writes poetry in a notebook she carries with her everywhere. At the hair salon where she works as a beautician, she shares her gift of poetry with her boss and her best friend, Iesha (Regina King). When a hair show comes up in Oakland, it turns out Iesha can get them a ride that same weekend with her postman boyfriend who has to drop off packages there. Justice says no, like she’s been voicing since she lost her own boyfriend while her boss and Iesha keep telling her the best way to get over one man is to get another. She decides to ride to the hair show alone, but her car won’t start, so she has to call Iesha for help who arrives with the large white postal truck with Iesha’s boyfriend Chicago and his friend Lucky (Tupac Shakur).

Justice has already met Lucky as the hair salon’s thirsty postman, so she’s not happy to see him. The group then embarks on an adventurous road trip. Annoyed at the situation, Justice ignores Lucky, who becomes bothered by it until they begin cussing each other out on the side of the road. Justice hops out of the truck in the middle of nowhere rural desert California and walks with her stuff on the side of the highway with Iesha trying to convince to jump back in. Eventually Justice does. They then go to a convenient store, a family reunion, and an African festival. During these events, Justice and Lucky bond while Iesha and Chicago deteriorate.

Along the way, Chicago is abandoned on the side of the road after he punches Iesha, who claims to have slept with someone else after they had another cheating-related altercation at the reunion. By the time they get to Oakland, Lucky sees his rising rapper cousin being wheeled into an ambulance with bullets to the chest. Not only dropping off packages is Lucky’s plan in Oakland, it really is to join his cousin and make music in the rap game. With his cousin dying, Lucky blames Justice for him getting there too late as if he could’ve saved his cousin. Justice is hurt as she’s dropped off at the hotel for the hair show with Iesha. As Lucky comforts his aunt and uncle and convinces them he should inherit his cousin’s music equipment, Justice is at the hair show stoically perfecting hairstyles on models. Days later, Lucky brings his daughter to the hair salon where Justice works and apologizes to her. They realize they’re in love.

What’s lit about this classic film is it told the story of the black girl poet, a character rarely seen on the silver screen, internalizing what she sees and putting pen to paper despite the chaos around her. And she’s a soft-spoken poet where she’s not performing her poetry aloud on a stage—a common place to see poets in real and fictitious worlds when in actuality it might take the average poet a long time to work up to such confidence. Justice lives among ruins left behind by the 1992 LA uprising amid arrests, drug sales, and other inner city troubles. On top of it, Justice lost her mother to alcoholism and lives in a home alone with her cat. She’s trying to come to terms with the loneliness and depression caused by loss. Though she’s a hairstylist, for example, she wears hats to hide the new growth from her box braids. Her appearance alone screams a stereotype of urban black girl with also wearing  trapezoidal gold bamboo earrings, but society wouldn’t expect the melodious words coming from her crafted behind the scenes by Maya Angelou. The film still deserves its props more than 25 years later.

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what's lit

The ‘Chilling Adventures of Sabrina’ Well-Read Black Girl Storyline

Netflix

Halloween weekend bingeing was at its height with the premiere of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina on Netflix, the latest incarnation of the beloved Archie Comics character, Sabrina the Teenage Witch. While Sabrina battles demons living in the mortal world as a half-witch, the show managed to insert a well-read black girl storyline.

Sabrina (Kiernan Shipka) is adjusting to high school in the mortal realm with her three friends, who are conveniently battling their own demons: Susie (Lachlan Watson) is being bullied by the football players for identifying as nonbinary, Harvey (Ross Lynch) is reconciling flashbacks of a demon he had seen as a child in his father’s mines, and Roz (Jaz Sinclair) is trying to read as many as books as she can before she loses her vision to a degenerative eye condition.

When a black girl appears onscreen in a recognizable story, I get excited. Especially when the comically sweet ’90s Melissa Joan Hart version of the TV series spent a season disastrously failing to make Sabrina have a black friend named Dreama. So seeing Roz in the new Sabrina was a great surprise, and even greater when she asked the school administration to incorporate Toni Morrison’s classic, The Bluest Eye, into the literature curriculum.

The administration says no. Of course, this upsets Roz. She asks Principal Hawthorne why students can’t read such a masterpiece, and the principal rattles off other books not allowed in the curriculum such A Clockwork Orange. Roz leads the gang to the school library where they look for books they feel should be there but can’t find them. The librarian tells them a “purge of bad books” had occurred years ago.

Devastated, Roz later confides in Sabrina and Susie that she’s losing her vision — the reason why she’s fighting for the books. But in a turn of events, Sabrina’s secret witch teacher Mrs. Wardwell helps the girls organize a secret banned book club. 

Schools across the country are still dealing with banned books. This year’s list of banned books can be found here. Many books are by marginalized writers with content surrounding race, culture, sexual orientation and other so-called controversial issues. This clever statement of a storyline spans a few episodes but eventually does get swallowed by the demon haunting of the characters. 

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experiences

Book Launch: ‘Little Fires Everywhere’ by Celeste Ng

With so many concerts going on around the LA area Friday night, I decided to look for an event more my pace. Luckily, on Facebook I found Celeste Ng was scheduled to speak and sign books at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena. Her newest novel Little Fires Everywhere had been gaining momentum on the best-seller lists, and since I recently read and enjoyed Everything I Never Told You, I went to the event to get insight on the author’s work and writing process.

In Little Fires Everywhere, a suburban mother is dealing with her house burning down amid her seemingly perfect life and trying to piece together what sparks ignited the blaze. The story takes place in Shaker Heights, Ohio — the author’s second hometown — and at the event she spoke about the “metaphorically rich” planned community and how rules shape it. She used the example of how residents couldn’t leave trash cans out on the curb for collection; it was too messy, so the city had golf carts go in the back of residents’ houses to fetch the trash to bring it up the driveway to the truck at the curb.

This fascinated me. In the book jacket, her bio reads she grew up in Shaker Heights — where she said she lived from 10 to college — and Pittsburgh. Recently I had just realized I spent half my childhood in Chicago and the other half in Sacramento. The most recent novel I’m working on surrounds a teenage girl secretly becoming a mermaid at a nightclub in Chicago, but I based the character’s neighborhood on my original neighborhood of Rogers Park that had such an idyllic quality that it didn’t feel like it was in Chicago, and from Celeste’s description maybe more like Shaker Heights. And I too had moved to Sacramento at age 10 up to college. Chicago has more personality, of course, but maybe Northern California suburban living might creep up into a later story.  

Celeste also discussed her writing process and how the idea of her latest novel  germinated in 2009 but the actual writing didn’t come until after 2014’s Everything I Never Told You. So the characters evolved in her head, so she encouraged writers to not be so consumed with how long the story is taking to get on paper and then the long road to being published. She even praised how Sweet Tarts and other candies got her through writing, with a tweet about Sweet Tarts catching the attention of the company that sent her a package. Like many writers, she worked at home, the library, and cafes, which felt inspiring since it felt like I could create a great novel though I spent so much time writing it in all the same places near me.

The event drew a packed room with about 75 or so people braving rush hour traffic. I bought the hardcover book and got it signed, but I choked when I met her because I wanted to tell her about my author aspirations. Sometimes, I can get my words out when meeting authors quickly at book signings and sometimes not, but she was polite and I’m looking forward to reading the novel soon. 

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experiences

Author Event: Jade Chang and Natashia Deón

Meeting two authors in one night is an amazing treat, but when they drop knowledge, it’s even more amazing. That knowledge: build your reputation as a writer before your work comes out.

Jade Chang of The Wangs vs. The World and Natashia Deón of Grace spoke together at a Women’s National Book Association meeting last Wednesday night at Skylight Books in Los Angeles.

At the event, the authors dove into what inspired them to write their novels and how being a woman writer — especially women of color writers — affected their work. They spoke about their past experiences and how it took them both about eight years to get to the finish line for their debut novels. 

It turned out they both completed the same fellowship. After the talk, I went up to Chang to tell her how much I adored her book, which I had conveniently finished earlier in the day. Then I went to Deón to buy her book since my daily attempts to win a Goodreads giveaway seemed to be fruitless.

They suggested applying for the literary fellowships that would be convenient to your life, e.g. you can keep your day job if necessary, to learn about the publishing industry and how to navigate it. If you don’t have a masters in fine arts in creative writing, these fellowships can help lessen the barriers of entering the publishing industry.