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‘Black Cake’ Brilliantly Illustrates the Main Character’s Journey of Deceit

⚠️ Spoilers ahead! Watch the TV series on Hulu.

⚠️ Trigger warning! The story and the post below have graphic references to topics such as sexual assault.

Black Cake on Hulu brings Charmaine Wilkerson’s debut novel to life through a cinematographic lens, showing the main character’s inner conflicts of hiding her identity multiple times to escape an arranged marriage that ends in murder. 

The TV series opens with Covey escaping the murder scene in her wedding dress toward the ocean in 1960s Jamaica then shows 70-something Eleanor walking into the ocean with her surfboard, determined to get lost in the water. The girl and the woman are the same person. How Coventina “Covey” Lyncook, played magnificently by Mia Isaac in her youthful years, becomes Eleanor Bennett, played by Chipo Chung in her older years, makes the story within Black Cake full-bodied like the rich dessert that serves as its title.

For the quick synopsis (the book review can be found here), Covey is growing up in Jamaica as a competitive swimmer and the only daughter of Johnny “Lin” Lyncook, one of the only Chinese immigrants in the Black community. Her mother, Mathilda, left years earlier, so her mother’s friend and housekeeper, Pearl, helps raise her while earning money baking black cakes for weddings. When Lin runs into gambling issues that threaten his general store, he arranges for Covey to marry Little Man, a career criminal. Seventeen years old, Covey wants to keep swimming with her best friend, Bunny. She is also in love with Gilbert “Gibbs” Grant, a fellow competitive swimmer. When Little Man falls to his death during the reception right when Pearl’s black cake is being served, Covey makes a run toward the ocean. She is now a suspect in her husband’s murder. In the water, she is rebaptized as Coventina Brown on her way to England then Eleanor Douglas in Scotland then Eleanor Bennett in the U.S. Her two children, Byron and Benedetta “Benny,” spend the length of the story deciphering their mother’s deathbed confessions through audio files before discovering they have another sibling. 

The overwhelming theme of the loneliness around hiding your true identity to escape a life choice someone made for you bleeds into most of the scenes involving the character of Covey. Her gambling father forces her into an arranged marriage with an older man known for his criminal activity, and now the girl who had dreams of taking over the world of competitive swimming is running for her survival. The criminal arrangement still leads her to a life of criminality that forces her to change and steal her identity to escape trouble. 

In the second episode “Coventina,” Covey labors over a pot of Chinese fish soup at her clients’ family home. She is ordered to make fish and chips for the two children she cares for as a nanny, but the homesickness is too overpowering in London. While she has access to the kitchen, she makes the soup. The maid, who is also Chinese, smells the soup and tastes it. She recognizes the dish and questions Covey about how she learned to make the soup. Covey answers that her grandmother taught her without revealing she too is Chinese. The maid leaves with suspicions. Covey can’t afford to bond with the maid over their shared ethnic identity because she is hiding her entire identity. What if the maid is a Chinese woman from Jamaica? When Covey serves the children the soup, they are disgusted and upset that fish and chips are not being served as expected. Though she is homesick, Covey is embarrassed that she tried to bring a sense of home into someone else’s home, especially serving children without developed and diverse palates. The moment is smaller than the many pivotal moments, but it stands out in demonstrating Covey’s loneliness and homesickness in such a simple light. The dinner forces her to reexamine her fear of living within the Caribbean and Chinese communities in London and wonder if the next batch of immigrants who arrive on the next ship will recognize her and turn her in to the authorities in Jamaica. 

The third episode “Eleanor” shows us how Covey becomes Eleanor after assuming the identity of her upbeat roommate Eleanor, played by Karise Yansen, who is killed in a train accident as they are traveling to live a new life in Edinburgh, Scotland. In the show, she has a hard time finding a job as a Caribbean immigrant while recovering from her leg laceration from the accident. She feels she has to hide even more. It mentally takes her back to the island where she is courting Gibbs, played by Ahmed Elhaj. Since she has a boyfriend, she wants Bunny to find one, too. But Bunny, played by Lashay Anderson, doesn’t seem interested in the local boys. She confesses that she likes Covey the way she’s supposed to like boys. Covey reprimands her friend to never repeat those words and advises Bunny to pretend to like a boy out of protection. Back alone in Edinburgh, Covey as Eleanor realizes the advice she had given her friend is the advice she needs for herself to survive. 

In the same episode, Covey finds a secretarial job. Out of excitement in finding employment, she wears a light pink crocheted dress with pink heels topped with white flowers on her first day. Right away, her Scottish female colleagues seem to be annoyed by her presence and make comments about the brightness of her outfit. Covey is again reminded to hide. So, the next day, she arrives in an outfit with a drabber color. When she spots accounting errors, she tries to bring the problem to Beatrice, played by Anna Mawn, the ringleader of the women in the office. She gets angry at Covey for insinuating she has made a mistake.

But Covey doesn’t feel right about the mistakes in the account. She goes to her male boss, who seems understanding of the situation. He admonishes Beatrice for ignoring the mistakes and invites Covey to dinner with his wife. The trust between Covey and her boss makes her feel seen in a positive light. Then her boss reveals that he knows Covey is lying about her identity. He points out the lack of nursing education, a lie Covey used on her résumé as part of her new identity as Eleanor. With Covey afraid to confess, her boss sexually assaults her. Beatrice notices Covey in shock returning to their room in the office. She follows Covey into the restroom, where she explains the boss had assaulted her and the other women in the office, but they all needed the job. She tells Covey to clean herself up and return to her desk. Covey is visibly upset over the ordeal and how she let her walls down to the first person who showed her attention when she was supposed to be invisible. 

Covey returns to London after having her daughter, Mathilda, as a result of the assault. As the seventh episode “Birth Mother” shows a pregnant Covey trying to stay under the radar at a church, she fights to be noticed to keep her daughter. But she fails when a couple swoops baby Mathilda in a quickie adoption arranged by the nuns. Covey is running after the car carrying her baby away, but she cannot keep up. 

Since Edinburgh turned out to be a disaster starting with the tragic death of her roommate, Covey puts on her cloak of invisibility in the fourth episode “Mrs. Bennett” while walking the streets of London. She notices a protest across the street, and in a perfect moment of fate, she lays her eyes on her beloved Gibbs. He is yelling into a megaphone alongside protestors, but he stops when he lays his eyes on Covey. They immediately reunite and spend time together. But one day, a Caribbean girl notices Covey. She calls out to Covey, but Covey answers to Eleanor now. The girl asks about Eleanor’s whereabouts since it was reported that Covey had died in the train accident. Covey hides behind Gibbs and explains the stress and the loneliness of hiding in plain sight. Gilbert Bennett Grant becomes Bert Bennett while Covey becomes Eleanor Bennett. 

The series shows a healthy portion of the recently past present and current present with Byron, played by Ashley Thomas, and Benny, played by Adrienne Warren, who are making sense of their mother’s story and realizing why both their parents had to change their names once they started their new lives in the U.S. But the dramatic sequence of events featuring Mia Isaac as young Covey tugs on the heartstrings more since the strong emotions of disappointment, loneliness, and despair lay within Covey’s past. Throughout the series, there are flashbacks to the relatively peaceful existence Covey lived in Jamaica, even after her mother, Mathilda, left the family in hopes of finding the promise of a better life in the West. The turquoise ocean, the lanky palm trees, and the golden sunlight of the island warm the screen every time, even at times when the story shows a rough scene. The cover for the series shows a young Covey running away toward the ocean at sunset from her deadly reception. How young Covey navigates a path she stumbled onto for the sake of living her life is the root of the storyline.

The eighth episode ends with adult Bunny, a world-famous competitive swimmer played by CCH Pounder, admitting to killing Little Man with a poison Pearl was preparing for the wedding to give Covey a chance at the life she wanted. Pearl decides it is too risky to use the poison, but Bunny sneaks it into Little Man’s drink. Covey’s three grownup children — Byron, Benny, and Mabel Mathilda, played by Sonita Henry — have joined Bunny, now known as Etta, to discover this revelation. But the TV storyline omits some of the book’s ending and opens to new possibilities of a second season.

Toward the end of the book, Etta leads Byron, Benny, and Mabel Mathilda to visit Pearl, played by Faith Alabi, in Florida. She would visit Pearl when she competitively swam in the state. Pearl is in shock that not only Covey was alive this entire time, but she raised a family with Gibbs. All the children remind her of Lin when they laugh. And Mabel looks the most like Covey, though she is considered White. Still in Florida, Etta also guides Covey’s children to their biological grandfather, who they learned with the revelations is Chinese and still alive in his 90s. After a tumultuous gambling past in Jamaica, his luck had turned in the U.S. through investments. He had a private investigator find Covey, who at the time was living as Eleanor Bennett in California, but he felt his daughter should’ve reached out to him. Though he left the island, most of the island at the time ended up in Florida instead of the U.K. in the late 1960s, so he believes Covey would’ve found him if she wanted to. These crucial reunions and meetings, for example, aren’t covered in the series, but they could add another element in a new season.

Another part of the book that failed to make it to the screen is Covey as Eleanor before her death going to see her old friend, renowned swimmer Etta Pringle, speak at a conference. Eleanor sits in the crowd, and Etta notices the face of her old friend who she believed died in a train accident in Scotland decades earlier. Eleanor gives Etta a note with a phone number. They discuss awkwardly a date to meet, but by that time, Eleanor is dead. 

In the TV series’ fifth episode “Mother,” Byron gets arrested for beating Benny’s abusive ex-boyfriend on the street after Benny calls to be rescued. In the book, Byron’s girlfriend Lynette, played by Rebecca Naomi Jones in the show, calls Byron to notify him that she couldn’t make it to his mother’s funeral because her nephew had been involved in a police incident. Also in the book, Lynette gives birth to their son. But in the show, Byron finds out at the end that he will be a father when Lynette shows up to the funeral, so his parenthood can be explored in another season. 

The series emphasizes a few events in the book. One example is Mabel Mathilda, who is a cultural food anthropologist who gets canceled for whitesplaining indigenous foods during a panel discussion. She is the daughter who reluctantly is given up for adoption. She was raised in a White family and not told about her adoption until Eleanor Bennett’s lawyer Charles Mitch, played by Glynn Turman, reaches out to her. Mabel is raising her son, Gio, alone, but she sends him to boarding school while she lives between London and Italy. This is shown on screen, but in the book, we see Mabel yearn for Gio to return home after noticing her neighbors’ son, who is the same age as Gio. Mabel’s husband died before Gio was born, but the series can dive deeper into Mabel’s life. The scene in the TV series where young Covey is running after the car belonging to Mabel’s adoptive parents is excruciating to the point that Mabel will have to deal with that image and bring it up with her family. She still also has to tell Gio that she is adopted, has met her biological siblings, and went to her biological mother’s funeral while lying about being on her book tour in the U.S. The show spotlights the personal lives of Byron and Benny since we meet them at the beginning of the series, while Mabel is introduced in “Mother,” therefore we have the abridged version of her reality.

Reminiscent of the visual reimagining of Natalie Baszile’s Queen Sugar by Ava DuVernay and Oprah Winfrey, Black Cake keeps its story mainly intact and gives moments more space to breathe and expand. Along with author Charmaine Wilkerson, Oprah is also an executive producer for Black Cake. Thanks to showrunner Marissa Jo Cerar’s book-to-TV credits, the series tells the story with dramatic cinematographic shots. The series is so exquisitely done, but it’s due to the novel being entertaining and heart-wrenching simultaneously with the tension pulsating on every page the way it’s pulsating in every scene.

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‘Bel-Air’ Shows How a Black Teacher Could Be Punished for Expanding Book Access

"Compromised" Episode 203 -- Pictured: (l-r) Akira Akbar as Ashley, Tatyana Ali as Ms. Hughes -- (Photo by: PEACOCK)

⚠️ Spoilers ahead! Watch the series on Peacock.

Peacock’s Bel-Air not only united the original Ashley Banks with the new Ashley Banks, but the reboot drama united them in a storyline highlighting the near erasure of Black literature in the classroom.

The show is a serious portrayal of the 1990s NBC sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air that brought rapper Will Smith to the silver screen. The new version stars Jabari Banks, who has an uncanny resemblance to Will and holds the fictional last name of the TV family in real life. It’s still the same story of a Black teen boy from West Philadelphia who must move to the upscale Los Angeles enclave of Bel-Air with his aunt and her immediate family to stay out of trouble. 

Tatyana Ali, who played Ashley in the sitcom, made a guest appearance in the second season of Bel-Air by playing teacher Ms. Hughes to the reimagined version of her former character Ashley, played by Akira Akbar. 

At the elite Bel-Air Academy, Ms. Hughes gives Ashley a book, The Revolution Has Come: Black Power, Gender, and the Black Panther Party in Oakland, by Robyn C. Spencer, in the premiere episode “A Fresh Start.” Ms. Hughes asks for a two-page summary, which is an extra credit assignment since the book is outside of the curriculum. 

In the second episode “Speaking Truth,” Ms. Hughes hands Ashley another book after class. This time, it’s I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown. A White classmate glares at their exchange in the background. The look of disgust on the classmate’s face shows the concern that Ms. Hughes is showing Ashley more preference because they’re both Black. Soon, we learn a complaint has been filed against Ms. Hughes. And it’s not the first.

When Ashley later bumps into Ms. Hughes in the hallway with a box of her effects inside, she asks why the teacher is leaving. Ms. Hughes gives Ashley words of encouragement, but Ashley is obviously devastated that her favorite teacher, one of the very few Black teachers in the school, is gone. 

Ashley tells her parents Vivian, played by Cassandra Freeman, and Phil, played by Adrian Holmes, about Ms. Hughes’ firing. They discover that Ms. Hughes was let go over providing books outside of the approved curriculum at a parent advisory committee meeting. Vivian even lists the authors Ashley is now exposed to because of Ms. Hughes’ influence, such as James Baldwin, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Toni Morrison, and Paula Giddings.

Will, Ashley’s cousin, and Carlton, Ashley’s brother played by Olly Sholotan, get involved by bringing the issue to the high school’s Black Student Union in an effort to keep Carlton elected as class president by maintaining the Black student vote. A protest comes up as the best response to Ms. Hughes’ firing. Except Carlton has a chance to win the school’s highest student award and be the first Black student to win the award. The BSU adviser, who is Black, dissuades Carlton to plan the protest; it’s not worth sacrificing the award over a fired teacher who wasn’t following the rules. 

The third episode “Compromise” shows the BSU dealing with the administration’s threat to suspend them all if members and allies walk out during classes. Then Carlton and BSU president strike a deal with the administration: Students can walk out but can’t make speeches or hold signs. The middle school students like Ashley are already barred from participating in the walkout. 

On the day of the walkout at 11 a.m., Carlton leads participating students to the quad in protest of not only Ms. Hughes being fired but also in support for a more inclusive curriculum. The pressure to go against the compromise made with the administration revs up Carlton’s anxiety. Will says he has Carlton’s back as he takes a large sign and runs up staircases to end up on the roof. He unrolls a sign that reads “Black Teachers Matter.” With a raised fist, he starts the chant “Black Teachers Matter.” Students below join in the chant. 

According to Tatyana’s Instagram post, this episode is her last appearance, so the Ms. Hughes storyline may end there. But how students are walking out in protest over demanding inclusive curricula is an example of art imitating life. 

Students in Virginia walked out last fall due to Governor Glenn Youngkin’s transgender student policies. Last month, students across Florida walked out to protest Governor Ron DeSantis’ plans to defund diversity, equity, and inclusion programs at colleges and universities. 

At the root of the issue in Bel-Air is that a Black female teacher mentored a Black female student by giving her books that would never be read in the classroom or approved for a syllabus at a predominantly White upper-crust school. But the mentorship was severed by complaints from other classmates not getting the same attention. 

To be fair, unfairness should be reported in situations like classroom settings where teacher favoritism could affect your grades, but that part of the conversation is not discussed. The repercussions of firing a Black teacher over providing Black stories go deeper with dismantling a literary mentorship that had already opened a student’s mind.

One in five Black or African American private school teachers worked at schools with less than 25% enrollment of students of color, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. That shows how rare a relationship is between a Black teacher and a Black student at a predominantly White private school. 

Out of 3,420 children’s books in 2021, 36% were “books by and about Black, Indigenous and People of Color,” per data from the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the School of Education, University of Wisconsin–Madison. As books by authors of color seem to see higher rates of bans and attempts at bans, students of all backgrounds may not know about those books if they’re not available to them at school or the public library. Hence, Ms. Hughes giving Ashley books on the side to read that explore the experiences and identities of people of African descent is viewed as an act of defiance.

Although the storyline is rooted in students demanding a more inclusive curriculum, the issue of approved literature impacts many educators who are currently witnessing conflicts with some of their local and state regulators restricting what is taught in classrooms. 

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‘From Scratch’ TV Review: Bread and Brine

⚠️ Spoilers ahead! Read the book, book review, and/or watch the limited series on Netflix.

Christmas 2004 opens up the fifth episode of From Scratch when the parents of Lino, played by Eugenio Mastrandrea, arrive in Los Angeles to care for their son who’s battling a rare soft-tissue cancer.

Amy, played by Zoë Saldaña, is standing at the end of the escalator with her mother Lynn, played by Kellita Smith, as they wait for Lino’s father Giacomo, played by Paride Benassai, and Lino’s mother Filomena, played by Lucia Sardo, to come down to their level in the airport. Amy has to run up the escalator to help them since they probably never used one before. Once they all arrive at the house, Lino becomes the focus.

Filomena rushes to her bedridden son while Giacomo stops before the front door and remains in the garden. As a lifelong farmer, he sees myriad mistakes in the boxes where plants like garlic and parsley are growing. He stays outside to tend to the garden.

Inside, Filomena opens up her heavy suitcase to reveal glass jars of pastas, spices, herbs, and tomatoes. She cooks a hearty meal for Lino, but Amy has to tell her that Lino can’t eat that type of meal on his medications. Lino gets jealous others get to eat his mother’s cooking, so he stuffs his face. And, of course, he gets nauseous before his scheduled stay in the hospital.

The transportation of the food happens in the memoir by Tembi Locke as she tells the story of falling in love with her late husband Saro and moving through the stages of grief with her daughter in Saro’s homeland of Sicily.

“Bread and Brine” is the name of a chapter. With the book mostly focusing on Tembi’s time in Sicily after her husband dies, the chapter shows the relationship between Tembi and her mother-in-law Croce, who cooks as she grieves.

“She had never let me cook in her house. Never. Not even her chef son was allowed to,” Tembi writes. “No matter how many nights I slept under her roof, no matter how many times she washed my bras and ironed my underwear, I was her guest. Even if I was also family. She preferred to work alone, at her own pace; she didn’t want company while she cooked. In the past, I had just passed through, made small talk, but had never lingered from start to finish. She, like many women in town, saw their time at the stove as their domain. I was forbidden to even set the table.”

coffee break

As Lino recovers from surgery, Giacomo finally comes to greet his son in the hospital bed. They have a small heart-to-heart when Lino says he would like a cup of coffee. This gives Giacomo a spring in his step as he walks around the hospital in search of coffee without knowing English. He finds a doctor who seems to know a bit of Italian who helps him use the coffee machine. He tells a story about seeing Lino in the hospital when he was a kid who had broken a bone, but now it’s different.

When he returns to the hospital room, he sees Amy’s father Hershel, played by Keith David, bonding with Lino. Standing by the door, he notices the connection between the two, blossoming over his absence from his son’s life at a time when he expanded his family.

Lino soon comes home, where his family and friends sit down to watch football, also known as soccer, on the Italian channels. Giacomo asks one of Lino’s friends about his son. As they talk about kids, Lino becomes increasingly irritated because the chemotherapy has threatened his reproductivity. He gets up and leaves with his crutch.

IT COULD GET WORSE

For a moment of escape, Amy runs to her and Lino’s mutual friend Preston, played by Rodney Gardiner, to drink scotch and talk. He welcomes the opportunity, especially when he’s just watching the Black Christmas classic Holiday Heart starring Ving Rhames as a drag queen helping a girl and her drug-addicted mother. Amy is upbeat about Lino’s surgery to remove the cancer. But Preston has other thoughts. He offers the possibility that Lino may never quite fully recover; the cancer can return.

The doctor tells Amy and Lino that the surgery was successful, but recurrence is possible. Lino describes cancer as “like a weed” to his parents, who learn they have to tame their excitement over the surgery.

Since the surgery was technically a success, Lino now qualifies for a clinical trial. He announces the news at dinner with the entire family. Then Amy’s sister Zora, played by Danielle Deadwyler, announces her engagement to her longtime boyfriend Ken, played by Terrell Carter. The family congratulates the happy couple. Even Giacomo stands up ready to give a toast. Lino is in disbelief. His own father who didn’t go to his wedding is happy an unrelated couple is getting married. The bright mood plummets.

Going back to the book, Tembi brings Saro and his parents to her native Texas to meet her family. Saro’s parents enjoy a Houston Texans football game and struggle to figure out the art of eating Texas Barbecue. Tembi catches her mother-in-law taking in the scene, looking at her son constantly until she turns to Tembi’s sister Attica Locke, who serves as the head of the Netflix series, to tell her her surprise about Saro being welcomed in America.

“And as I sat there with everyone eating—not just consuming food but sharing our dreams, our aspirations, our histories—I could see how the stakes, the specter of illness, had changed all our lives,” Tembi writes. “What was important had changed. We were far from the wedding in Florence, reading telegrams from the half of our family who had refused to come because of race and fear. That trip to Houston was the first time we didn’t have to wonder what it would have been like to have both parts of who we were together in the same room.”

The next morning on the show, Lino and Giacomo clear the air with a hug as Lino’s parents head out for their flight to Sicily. The cancer is gone, and the family is at peace until the next monumental changes come along.

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‘From Scratch’ TV Review: Bitter Almonds

⚠️ Spoilers ahead! Read the book, book review, and/or watch the limited series on Netflix.

Delivering a cake to a Sicilian baker’s third cousin leads to a new job opportunity for Amy, played by Zoë Saldaña, in From Scratch as Amy’s husband Lino, played by Eugenio Mastrandrea, fulfills his dream of being the head chef in his own restaurant.

The Netflix drama is based on the best-selling memoir of the same name by actress Tembi Locke about her relationship with her late husband Saro, who succumbs to cancer, and her journey through the grief in Saro’s homeland of Sicily.

In the limited series, Amy starts volunteering at the Watts Tower with teaching kids art. She feels more of a purpose as a volunteer compared to her job at an upscale art gallery. When her boss calls her to convince a client to keep their work in the gallery in the middle of a volunteer session, Amy realizes she would rather make the community gig full-time.

Meanwhile, Lino loses his job. The greasy Italian restaurant he had been working at since he moved to Los Angeles is closing over loss of business. The owner says he’ll keep the building, but operations will cease. Lino asks if he could finally cook his own authentic Sicilian cuisine in an experimental dining experience. The owner agrees, making Lino the head chef of the new iteration.

Amy wrestles with her decision for the lower-paying job, so she calls her father Hershel, played by Keith David, for advice. Hershel reminds her that she’s a married woman who needs to discuss the life-changing decision with her husband.

When Amy and Lino come together to talk through their career moves, they convince each other to follow their dreams.

ONE STEP FORWARD, TWO STEPS BACK

A banner for L’Isola, Lino’s test run of a dining experience, hangs over the old restaurant’s signage for opening night.

Amy’s sister Zora, played by Danielle Deadwyler, brings her former NFL boyfriend Ken, played by Terrell Carter, to the new restaurant. Zora is acting on Amy’s advice to introduce her boyfriend to their mother Lynn, played by Kellita Smith.

Frenzied by serving patrons, Amy tells Zora that she did not expect the introduction to happen on the opening night of her husband’s restaurant. But Zora explains that they would all be under the same roof, so it makes the most sense until Lynn rebuffs Ken every time he shares information about himself. The introduction is a fail, especially without Amy being able to sit down with her family to be a mediator. Zora becomes upset with Amy for the bad advice.

A DREAM DEFERRED

One day, Lino comes home after a long day at work complaining about pain in his knee. Amy checks the knee and notices it’s swollen. Noting the hardened texture, she suggests Lino should see an orthopedic doctor.

Amy reaches out to Zora for an orthopedic doctor since Ken would know one with his professional football background. Zora becomes enraged; she feels she’s being used by her needy younger sister again. She gives Amy the information but warns her about her dependence.

At the doctor’s office, the scan of Lino’s knee leads to a referral to an oncologist. Lino eventually gets diagnosed with a rare soft-tissue cancer. Right away, Lino is rushed to chemotherapy, as Amy suddenly becomes a caretaker.

Though L’Isola is getting rave reviews, the trial restaurant closes immediately without Lino being able to be on-site as the head chef. Amy must convince her former unfeeling boss at the art gallery to give her contract work in order to keep her health insurance policy. She doesn’t share Lino’s diagnosis, but her sobbing convinces the boss to help her.

Zora comes by the house to see what happened to Lino’s restaurant. As soon as she’s at the door, Lino collapses behind Amy. They rush Lino to the hospital, where he has to stay. Amy reveals to her family Lino’s cancer diagnosis and how it has already upended their lives.

THE BITTER AND THE SWEET

The name of the episode, “Bitter Almonds,” is also the name of a chapter in the memoir. But the book focuses more on life in Sicily after Tembi’s husband Saro dies from cancer. During her time of grief with Saro’s mother, Tembi receives a heavy bag of almonds from a neighbor in the town who said the almonds were from a cousin of Saro’s mother. When Tembi brings the almonds to the home, she realizes she brought another chore to the kitchen. Cracking the nuts open becomes a worthwhile experience to taste authentic Sicilian almonds.

“Bitterness, Sicilians understand, is an essential flavor both in food and in life. It has shaped the island’s culinary identity. There is no sweet without bitter. The poetry of island tells us that the same is true of the Sicilian heart.”

Saro’s cancer diagnosis is first detailed in the chapter “At the Table,” where Tembi describes the hardship of becoming a caretaker while still working as an actress. They are exhausted from the medical situation until Saro suggests Tembi should “take a lover.” They can’t enjoy their time together as he gets sicker. The swift transition came with her husband’s chemo rounds and knee surgery. The cancer is still a secret to his family.

“Many rounds of chemo, three hospital stays, and a major surgery later, Saro still had not told his parents about his diagnosis,” Tembi writes. They soon have to notify his family, who fly to LA. Like in the next episode where Amy must pick up Lino’s parents at the airport stateside and prepare mentally on how to deal with the parents who have failed to build a relationship with her.

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‘From Scratch’ TV Review: A Villa. A Broom. A Cake.

Image: Netflix

⚠️ Spoilers ahead! Read the book, book review, and/or watch the limited series on Netflix.

In the third episode of From Scratch, we make an 18-month jump to summer 2004 where Amy, played by Zoë Saldaña, and Lino, played by Eugenio Mastrandrea, are touring their wedding venue, a duchess’ mansion in Florence.

When they’re talking to the duchess about paying for their reservation, the duchess repeats how she needs the deposit in full. The microaggression from the duchess becomes a laughing matter when Amy and Lino meet with friends because they know the duchess, like many others, didn’t expect to see a Black American woman with a Sicilian man wanting to marry in an Italian mansion.

The series is a fictional adaptation of From Scratch by Tembi Locke, who tells the story of how she fell in love with her husband and how she fell in love with his country after his untimely death from cancer. This episode covers the wedding that doesn’t stray away too far from the memoir.

FAMILY MATHEMATICS

Before family arrives, Amy and Lino joke about him meeting her entire family. Lino will be baptized as a Texan, Amy laughs. Lino asks if that means he’ll be dipped in barbecue sauce. Amy giggles and says the choice condiment would be hot sauce.

What is unspoken between them is Lino’s family is not coming to the wedding. With his father still angry about his decisions to leave Sicily for education, career, and now a wife, Lino will have to lean on Amy’s family.

Like clockwork, Amy’s father, Hershel, played by Keith David, arrives in Florence in Texan cowboy attire, along with a crowd of their family members. The Black family dominates the guest list, and they’re wondering why the Sicilian family is not present. They compare the commute times from Houston to Dallas with Florence to Sicily, both trips an hourlong flight. How did they come halfway around the world while the much closer other side didn’t bother to show up?

At the low-key bachelorette slumber party, Amy asks her older sister, Zora, played by Danielle Deadwyler, if it’s OK to get married without her future in-laws in attendance at the wedding. As the day gets closer, the hope they will show up is dissipating.

Meanwhile in Castelleone, Sicily, Lino’s mother Filomena, played by Lucia Sardo, is visibly upset about not being able to attend her son’s wedding. She’s from another generation, as in she obeys her husband, Lino’s father Giacomo, played by Paride Benassai, disapproves of Lino’s actions. In fact, Giacomo calls Lino a “disgrace.”

It’s the wedding day. Amy gets her something old, something borrowed, something blue from Zora, her mother Lynn, played by Kellita Smith; her stepmother Maxine, played by Judith Scott; and her grandmother Evelyn, played by Greta Sesheta.

With the men, Lino is christened with Texas-shaped cuff links from Hershel. Though his father is not there, Lino can now depend on his father-in-law.

Before they walk down the aisle outside on the terrace, Amy and Lino meet inside the mansion. They console each other that they will be fine getting married without his parents there.

Image: Netflix

The Sicilan side did not show up in the book either. At least Tembi’s late husband Saro’s immediate family was not there, but an aunt and uncle-in-law had shown up.

“Unbeknown to us, they had driven down using the address on the invitation I had sent them. They had told no one they were coming, not Saro’s mother, not Saro’s father. To do so would have been a family betrayal. Still, there they were. Saro was speechless, moved to tears by their gesture. And for the first time, I sensed what we had missed in not having is parents there. My heart opened wide.”

After exchanging vows and jumping the broom, they have dinner. Lynn rises from her seat for a toast and advises the new married couple to not allow pebbles of problems pile up into a boulder. When there are too many peddles impeding growth, then a couple may never get past that boulder. She says she had that problem with Hershel. The moment becomes tense between the divorced couple, but Hershel finds a way to end the toast as guests drink their wine. Everyone later dances the Harlem Shuffle under string lights on the terrace.

PEBBLES TURN INTO BOULDERS

Amy and Lino embark on a trip to Sicily. Lino couldn’t return to the U.S. without seeing his family, although they refused to come to the wedding. Once on Sicilian ground, he calls his family’s home. His father picks up and warns him to not come near the house. Devastated, Lino says they can go back home. Amy says no; they can still enjoy their time.

At the hotel, Amy calls the house herself. Lino’s sister Biagia, played by Roberta Rigano, answers the phone this time, cradling a baby daughter who’s never met her uncle. Amy explains Lino wants to see the family badly. Biagia says it’d be impossible for her and her mother to see Lino; the very action will bring shame to the family for disobeying the patriarch.

Later, Giacomo comes inside the house and takes off his boots. Filomena notices a pebble in one of the boots that she slides into her apron’s pocket. It symbolizes the pebbles, or the problems, that could pile up in a marriage, per Lynn’s wedding toast.

The next day, while Amy and Lino walk around the farmers market, Lino spots his father bringing a merchant some of his crops. Lino and Giacomo lock eyes, but Giacomo jumps into his truck and speeds away.

At home, Filomena scrimps on Giacomo’s meal by barely adding any tomato sauce to his spaghetti. This deliberate action eats away at her so that she tells her priest during confession. The priest asks why would she do that as a dutiful wife. She explains the fractured relationship she now has with her son, including missing his wedding, because she must obey her husband.

As Amy and Lino are leaving the hotel after a fruitless effort to see his family, Lino notices his mother, his sister, and his baby niece. They sit down outside to catch up, but not for very long. Filomena and Biagia must go before Giacomo notices anything is amiss. They return to the priest’s car and drive away.

The memoir has Tembi surprising Saro with a trip to Sicily months after the wedding. They stayed in a hotel and shared their schedule with Saro’s sister Franca. This brought different family members, mostly cousins, to their hotel to meet with Saro and Tembi. Then finally, Saro’s parents came.

“As we passed bread, no one referenced the previous years. There was no grand apology or even gesture of regret for time lost. We just ate and carried forward as if starting our relationship from that moment.” Tembi goes on to write that she ate “pasta with local capers and a simple tomato sauce that pleased my palate like no other.”

CAKE DELIVERY

On this trip, Tembi and Saro are saddled with a dry cake a local baker gives them. The cake, or “the traditional cake of Polizzi Generosa,” is supposed to be delivered to actor Vincent Schiavelli, known for his roles in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ghost, and Batman Returns. Once they’re back in Los Angeles, Tembi calls her agent about how to contact Vincent. The actor himself calls and comes over to pick up the cake.

This is dramatized with Amy and Lino being in the same predicament looking for a distant cousin of a Sicilian baker who lives in LA like them. Amy uses her contacts at the art gallery to find the cousin, who happens to work at the Watts Towers art installation, which was created by Italian immigrant artist Sabato “Simon” Rodia. The cousin also gets his cake.

The cake leads to more for Amy as she wrestles with a major career decision right when she and Lino are stabilizing their married lives.

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what's lit

‘Love Life’ Examines the Underappreciated Black Editor Experience

*Spoilers ahead! Watch the series’ second season on HBO Max*

The Good Place star William Jackson Harper leads the HBO Max series Love Life as a Black editor in a White-dominated publishing world who evolves his approach to diversifying the field.

The first season of the series starred Anna Kendrick as an art dealer stumbling through relationships. In this new iteration, we meet Harper’s character Marcus Watkins, who is also stumbling through relationships with the show emphasizing race and culture in his romantic and career choices via pitch-perfect narration by Keith David.

Marcus Watkins in the beginning of the series is married to Emily, played by Maya Kazan, but he’s starting to feel she doesn’t understand him as a Black man in America since she’s White. He makes this realization after meeting Mia Hines, played by Jessica Williams, at Anna Kendrick’s character Darby’s wedding reception at a bar. Marcus and Mia hit it off, though he’s married and she’s in a relationship with who we soon learn is no other than basketballer Amar’e Stoudemire playing himself. Marcus’ emotional affair is discovered by Emily via iPad messages, and they get a divorce. Marcus blames Mia for the divorce, which of course starts a fight that separates them. They reunite after a few relationships, then another mishap happens in their budding love that forces them to separate.

In the end, they finally get together and stay together with a marriage and baby. As an editor, Marcus struggles to get Black voices heard through the book projects he picks up because his publisher, the fictional Sutton Court Publishing, and boss Josh, played by Steven Boyer, are not supportive of his vision. After Marcus quits his job, Mia convinces him to pursue his own novel. He becomes a full-time author and finishes his novel within two years. And they live happily ever after.

Uplifting Black authors

The first episode “Mia Hines” starts off with Marcus poking fun at his new client, a social media influencer who wants to add an insane amount of words in a subtitle of an instructional book. He wants to take on more serious projects, like an Afrofuturism manuscript he found from a Black grad student at Columbia University.

Josh asks about an update on the social media influencer’s book, and Marcus pipes up about the Afrofuturism book. Josh isn’t interested because the sales projections on that type of book is unpredictable while the social media influencer’s book will become an instant best-seller with her built-in audience.

We see Marcus fighting through the frustration of trying to push more works by authors of color. He decides to invite student-author Trae, played by Jordan Rock, into his office. With Marcus’ notes, Trae is not having it. After ridiculing Marcus’ posters of Black authors from Toni Morrison with cigarette in hand to James Baldwin with cigarette in hand, Trae calls Marcus a “safe, nonthreatening” Black editor voicing the opinions of a White editor. Marcus argues no publisher would take on the thousand-page manuscript. They agree to disagree.

It’s not until the season finale “Epilogue,” Marcus reunites with Trae to get feedback on his novel. Trae, who appears to have sold his book, tells him that Marcus’ Black character trying to maneuver through the White publishing world lacks personality. Marcus takes the note, and it motivates him to improve the book that eventually sells to a publisher. After not seeing eye to eye, they become beta reader brothers.

Celebrating a legend

Marcus visits his University of Michigan professor parents in episode “Destiny Mathis.” His distant father Kirby, played by John Earl Jelks, and mother Donna, played by Fresh Prince of Bel-Air “first Aunt Viv” Janet Hubert, seem to be disappointed that Marcus married Emily too soon out of college and now is divorced. Marcus feels like his happily married parents who are celebrating 35 years together don’t understand the complexities of his modern-day relationships.

In episode “Becca Evans,” Marcus is given an invitation to The Paris Review dinner from Josh as a consolation prize of sorts for receiving a promotion without a raise. The dinner honors poetry legend Nikki Giovanni. It’s the perfect way to lure his father to Manhattan from Ann Arbor for a night of bonding out on the town with their favorite poet.

The fact that the show writers and HBO managed to book the legend and have her on TV is amazing in itself. At 78 years old, Nikki Giovanni takes the stage as the living legend she is, reciting “Autumn Poems.”

the heat
you left with me
last night
still smolders
the wind catches
your scent
and refreshes
my senses

I am a leaf
falling from your tree
upon which I was
impaled

Nikki Giovanni, “Autumn Poems”

Taking a stand

The season finale “Epilogue” makes several time jumps, starting with New Years’ Day 2020 to March 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic takes hold of society. As Marcus adjusts to working on his laptop from his couch, he realizes his live-in fling is not taking precautions seriously and breaks up with her. But as soon as he grows accustomed to his stay-at-home routine, the murder of George Floyd forces him to examine his role in society as a Black man.

Due to the pandemic, his job furloughs almost the entire staff, leaving Marcus the only employee of color. Via videoconferencing, Josh asks Marcus to review Sutton Court’s message on George Floyd and its commitment to diversity and inclusion. As much as Marcus had to fight to bring on authors of color that he still wasn’t able to bring on, the ask is too much. And Marcus demanded a proper promotion with a salary bump and didn’t get an answer. The missteps spark an expletive-laden explosion of how Sutton Court fails to have any commitment to diversity and inclusion whatsoever. Marcus quits on the spot by slamming his laptop screen down.

He soon reunites with Mia, who texts him out of the blue. They meet up masked up and commit to give their relationship another try. Then there’s marriage, a baby carriage, and the book Marcus always wanted to write.

The series packs in some Black Hollywood heavy-hitters like Blair Underwood and Kimberly Elise, both playing Mia Hines’ parents. Every episode is named after a person, mostly the woman Marcus is seeing, but under the romantic stumbling is a character of color also looking for his footing in the current publishing landscape.

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book reviews

Book Review: ‘Misfits’ by Michaela Coel

Misfits: A Personal Manifesto by Michaela Coel

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Read more book reviews like this on my blog shelit.com

Misfits by Michaela Coel is a smart quick read where the actress, screenwriter, and producer narrates her rise in entertainment by recognizing the people she classifies as misfits while also noticing how moths always seem to make an appearance on her journey.

How many other potential artists with stories we want and need have we lost for the sake of financial profit; have we lost to thoughtless education systems, thoughtless nurturing, thoughtlessness? Why are we platforming misfits, heralding them as newly rich successes while they balance on creaking ladders with little chance of social mobility? I can’t help usher them into this house if there are doors within it they can’t open.

The hourlong book starts with Michaela ready to kill a moth interrupting an informal Stranger Things screening in her flat with her friends. Instinctively, she sprays moth killer. Once her friends gag at the odor, she realizes her sense of smell is gone. That same year in 2018, she’s invited to the MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh TV Festival where she not only vocalizes her story but analyzes the elements that propelled her to unexpected stardom.

The author intersects lepidopterology throughout the key moments that contribute to her career in entertainment from dropping out of college a few times to taking a chance on a virtually White theater school, then writing her own play and performing it, and seeing that play become her first TV show, Chewing Gum.

The term “misfit” can be cross-generational and crosses concepts of gender or culture, simply by a desire for transparency, a desire to see another’s point of view. Misfits who visibly fit in will sometimes find themselves merging with the mainstream, for a feeling of safety.

Race and class define the story. The daughter of an immigrant single mother, Michaela attends a youth theater for free. She’s the only Black girl there. As an adult, the lack of diversity remains the same at her theater school. But when she writes the play that becomes the U.K. Netflix series Chewing Gum, she realizes the pattern continues on the industry level where she had to make sure the majority Black cast received the same treatment as the White actors.

During that show, she admits her business dealings weren’t clear to her. She eventually declines that newsworthy million-dollar offer from Netflix for her next show that evolves into HBO’s I May Destroy You. While working long hours on her second show, a night out for a break becomes the impetus for the future award-winning series as she is accosted by a flashback that makes her realize she had been raped. It’s then she finds herself leaning on the misfits she met inside and outside the industry to help her in the healing process and the storytelling process.

Overall, the personal manifesto highlights the author’s most meaningful memories describing where she is now and uses interesting symbolism from misfits to moths. Because of the length and substance, it’s a good choice for readers trying to stick to their annual reading goals or looking for something short and sweet.

View all my reviews

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what's lit

How ‘Younger’ Painted an Insanely Glamorous, Somewhat Diverse Publishing World

TV Land

Spoiler alert: The post below reveals storylines from the seventh season of Younger.

Literary industry cable series Younger wrapped up a successful seven seasons this summer. Though racial and ethnic diversity took a backseat to the storylines, the show still put diversity and inclusion in the forefront of an industry struggling to fulfill its promises.

Created by Sex and the City and Beverly Hills 90210 visionary Darren Star, Younger follows a 40-something White woman named Liza Miller, played by Broadway veteran Sutton Foster, who knocks her age down to 26 to get her foot back into the door of the publishing industry after raising her daughter and divorcing her husband. Based on Pamela Redmond Satran’s 2005 novel of the same name, the show started on TV Land in 2015 and moved to Paramount+ this year.

The show featured diversity markers, mainly with age and gender, in a fictional publishing scene made to look obscenely glamorous. Recent data from Lee & Low Books finds that the literary industry as a whole is 74% cisgender female, but when it comes to executive leadership positions, the number is down to 60%. On Younger, the main female characters are striving to retain and maintain leadership throughout the series to elevate works by women.

Amplifying younger voices

“Younger” Ep. 603 (Airs 6/26/19)

After lying about her age, Liza earns the coveted job of an editorial assistant at traditional publishing powerhouse Empirical. To make matters more complicated, Liza is paired up with actual 26-year-old Kelsey Peters, played by Hilary Duff, whose ambition oozes to make books more appealing to millennials.

This eventually leads to the two creating an imprint called Millennial, not only multiplying books by Gen Y authors but also taking a focus on female authors in the age group. As they are underestimated by Empirical and the industry at large, Liza and Kelsey build a behemoth of an imprint that in its final season begins suffering from hits by Empirical’s old White male investors.

This motivated the pair to create Inkubator, a spoken word event series featuring promising millennial authors ready to have their work published.

Women supporting women

“Younger” Ep. 501 (Airs 6/5/18)

Helping Liza and Kelsey on their literary adventures and misadventures are editor Diana Trout, known for her brusqueness and over-the-top statement necklaces, who is played by Miriam Shor who did not return for the final season; Lauren Heller, the carefree bisexual social media enthusiast played by Molly Bernard who replaces Diana’s presence in the Empirical office as an assistant; and Maggie Amato, the lesbian artist played by legend Debi Mazar who owns the fabulous loft they all seem to live in at one point in the series.

They become this unbreakable group, along with one man—Liza’s millennial ex, Josh, played by Nico Tortorella, a tattoo artist entrepreneur with a heart of gold. Liza goes back and forth with Josh and Empirical’s editor in chief, Charles Brooks, the well-meaning head honcho who is age-appropriate for Liza played by Peter Hermann. Having sexual relations with the boss while editing his ex-wife’s novel is one of the situations that comes up with the ill-begotten romance between Liza and Charles. This novel leaped offscreen onto our bookshelves as Marriage Vacation reviewed by she lit.

With all the drama mostly involving Liza’s back-and-forth relationships, the girl group feeds on their mistakes with men and women. The girlboss-in-making Kelsey seems to be pick the men who want to compete with her success in one way or another, with one ill-fated relationship leading to a death by scaffolding (very NYC) and an evil twin (very soapy). As Liza and Kelsey lean on Maggie, Lauren, and Diana, they also support female writers with some of the most familiar scenes of the series occurring in the closed office session with a new writer who is revolutionizing the newer subgenres, e.g. sick lit, teen environmentalist memoir, and boomer erotica.

Shelving racial diversity

“Younger” Ep. 612 (Airs 9/04/19)

The show’s cast is all-White, which is normal on TV shows to have an entire cast of the same racial makeup, but it resonates with the real-life publishing industry, unfortunately. The show failed to right this diversity and inclusion oversight with its choice of guest stars in earlier seasons.

Charles Michael Davis, who played Kelsey’s frenemy lover Zane Anders for three seasons, added much-needed melanin as a regular cast member, but he and his character had to depart in the final season due to his commitment to NCIS: New Orleans. As his character left the script, the show featured two writer characters who contributed to Millennial’s next phase.

Dylan Park, played by Yeena Sung, appeared in “The F Word,” the episode that introduces Inkubator. She is a future author with a novel that Kelsey and Liza try to get published through Empirical since Millennial by this time has been absorbed into the publisher thanks to the investors’ wishes. But editor in chief Charles is not interested, so Kelsey and Liza have the novel published by a release of a chapter every week in The Cut. Though an Asian American millennial female author is brought into the storyline, she only makes one appearance, failing to become a substantive character while her book really becomes the character.

The final season then brings in another author of color, Azealia King, played by De’Adre Aziza, a Black woman who has won the National Book Award. She’s so impressive that Charles wants to publish her next book. Her character appears in the last two episodes, almost as if the writer’s room realized they didn’t have enough female authors of color featured throughout the series.

Out of an industry that is 74% cisgender female, publishing is 76% White, according to the Lee and Low Books’ report. Numbers for professionals of color are broken down by 7% Asian descent, 6% Latino/Latina, 5% African descent, and less than 1% Native American and Middle Eastern.

Despite the diversity successes and failures of imagining the cutthroat Manhattan book publishing scene into an addictive summer TV series, the show still gives feel-good vibes and is expertly written with relatable moments. Live or relive the half-hour series on Paramount+ and Hulu.

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what's lit

When Maya Angelou Shared Her Wisdom on ‘Moesha’

In honor of Dr. Maya Angelou’s 92nd birthday, she lit will analyze the master storyteller’s unforgettable appearance on the 1990s Black girl TV sitcom Moesha.

Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis on April 4, 1928. Despite losing her voice after she was raped as a child, she eventually found her voice which led to an incredible career on the literary stage as she used her words to create brilliant memoir and poetry collections. While mute until she was twelve, she read voraciously and developed her talent from there. By the time she died in 2014 at the age of 86, she had received over 50 honorary degrees, the National Medal of Arts from President Bill Clinton, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama.

The film version of Maya Angelou’s 1969 memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings came out ten years later and was on repeat in my house along with 1984’s The Color Purple based on Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. When I became a teenager and realized I only knew Maya Angelou’s story via video, I started reading her memoirs including I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings; Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas; The Heart of a Woman; and Gather Together in My Name.

Twenty years ago, Maya Angelou played herself in a pivotal episode on Moesha, my favorite sitcom from childhood, and changed the course of the namesake character’s life. In the fifth season’s second episode, “Fired Up,” which aired Aug, 30, 1999 according to IMDb, Moesha—played by 90s braid queen multi-hyphenate Brandy—is looking for ways to redeem herself after accusing her boss at Vibe magazine of sexual harassment.

If you’re familiar with the sitcom that ran from 1996 to 2001 on UPN, then you know Moesha, a bright Black girl coming of age in the Leimert Park section of Los Angeles, would tend to get in trouble often by thinking she was grown and later learning she was not.

Moesha’s professional misstep has not been forgiven completely as her colleagues still treat her as the lowly editorial assistant. Then a message without a name comes to her desk, so she calls the number. It turns out to be Maya Angelou’s publicist! But everyone else in the office had already gone home. Moesha, with her best friend Niecy—played by Shar Jackson—there to head out for a movie, decides to pose as a reporter and says she can interview Maya Angelou at the Vibe office. Here’s a transcript of their interview:

Maya Angelou: “I suppose Socrates said it the best, most succinctly. He said, ‘The unexamined life is not worth living.'”

Moesha: “Oh, that is deep.” [audience laughter]

Maya Angelou: “Deep enough to write down?” [audience laughter]

Moesha: “Next question: What is Oprah really like?”

Maya Angelou: “I think that question is best asked of Oprah herself.”

Moesha: “Of course, I’m so sorry. OK now when you first started writing how did you get people to recognize your talent so you can be published?” 

Maya Angelou: “Other people’s recognition wasn’t my first focus. My focus was on the work. Recognition comes after that.” 

Moesha: “But wouldn’t it be frustrating if you knew you had the talent and drive, but no matter how hard you try, nobody gave you the chance?” 

Maya Angelou: “Well, you certainly are not talking about yourself. I mean, obviously you’re much appreciated here at Vibe. You have this important job and you just got out of college last night.” [audience laughter] 

Moesha: “Well, actually I bypassed college, so I could plunge straight into the world of journalism.” 

Maya Angelou: “You bypassed college?” [audience laughter] And let me ask you a question. Is this your office?” [She eyes her majestically crafted cane preparing to expose Moesha]. 

Moesha: “Unh, hunh. Why do you ask?” [A look of goofy bewilderment marks her face as if she couldn’t believe she got caught]. Maya Angelou then turns around a nameplate that reads Moesha’s male boss’ name toward the alleged reporter. 

Moesha: [She accepts she just got caught] “You’re not gonna tell me to go to college? Are you? Because I’ve had this discussion with my parents.” 

Maya Angelou: “My dear, elders all over the world do their best to gain some wisdom, so they can tell you young people something wise and wonderful to do which we know you’re not going to take to.” [audience laughter] 

Moesha: “So you are gonna tell me to go to college?” 

Maya Angelou: “I’m not going to tell you, but rather I’m going to pull something for your consideration. I’m suggesting more than any other place college can offer you a chance to know human thought over human centuries by then garner some preparation for your own life.” 

Moesha: “Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Angelou. You have given me so much to think about.” 

Maya Angelou: “I’m delighted.”

They embrace. Of course, Moesha gets fired.

After showing her boss her article on Maya Angelou, he tells Moesha she should’ve called him in order to ask the right questions. Now Vibe has to use its budget to send an experienced reporter to North Carolina to interview Maya Angelou in person. Moesha tries to explain how she seized an opportunity, but her boss tells her that’s 10% of the job and the other 90% is preparation. And from that question about Oprah and the other questions about her own situation, it was obvious Moesha hadn’t even done the research to interview Maya Angelou. 

When Moesha gets home, she surprises her family by announcing she’s going to college. Little do they know, the one and only Maya Angelou was the catalyst for the decision with sharing the knowledge about the importance of college and becoming the subject of Moesha’s poorly executed article that led to her firing.

The episode ends perfectly with Maya Angelou and Moesha reciting “Still I Rise,” alternating lines in the darkened den within Moesha’s house. Then they recite together:

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise.

Maya Angelou

After they speak the last line, they rise slightly off the sofa as if to show the power they received from their ancestors. “Still I Rise” is one of Maya Angelou’s most recognizable poems published in 1978’s And Still I Rise: A Book of Poems.

The Moesha guest appearance was a multi-generational milestone for Black women on TV by having intellectual icon Maya Angelou reciting her poetry about rising above racial barriers with top Black girl singer of the time Brandy. It showed Maya Angelou’s influence spanning over time, which she lit also reflected on in the 1993 film Poetic Justice starring pop legend Janet Jackson.

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what's lit

How Lisa Turtle Was ‘Slighted’ As a Black Teen Girl TV Character

Seven years after People reported she had bipolar disorder, Saved by the Bell star Lark Voorhies revealed this week on The Dr. Oz Show that indeed the diagnosis is somewhat true—and that she felt “slighted and hurt” over being left out of reunions and the upcoming reboot. As a 90s kid who paid attention to any Black girl who came across the TV screen, I noticed how Lark’s character Lisa Turtle as the lone Black girl character in the high school sitcom ensemble was also slighted on screen.

In the Dr. Oz interview, Lark clarified she has schizoaffective disorder, which the National Institutes of Health defines as “a mental health condition that includes features of both schizophrenia and a mood disorder such as bipolar disorder or depression.” She noted it may be the reason why she’s not included in the Saved by the Bell casual and formal reunions and the reboot expected on the NBCUniversal streaming service Peacock launching in April. The original show ran on NBC as a part of its TNBC teen-friendly Saturday morning programming from 1989 to 1993.

When Dr. Oz asked Lark about her feelings on the offscreen and onscreen cast reunions, Lark said, “They have the right to do that, and they’re happy in their element. They can have it.”

Treating her with kid gloves, Dr. Oz then asked if Lark would like to be a part of those reunions. She answered, “Oh yes, what family isn’t kept complete without its lead.”

Lark was the only girl brought onto the new reincarnation of Good Morning, Miss Bliss, a 1987-1989 sitcom also starring her Saved by the Bell castmates Mark-Paul Gosselaar as Zack Morris and Dustin Diamond as Samuel “Screech” Powers about middle schoolers in Indianapolis. The show reformatted with moving the setting to the fictional Bayside High School in the upscale Los Angeles neighborhood of Pacific Palisades and adding three new kids: Tiffani-Amber Thiessen as Kelly Kapowski, Mario Lopez as AC Slater and Elizabeth Berkley as Jessie Spano. This rounded out the most well-known Saved by the Bell cast.

But Lisa became overshadowed by Kelly and Jessie, who were presented to the audience as the hotties. Lisa became the fashionista, though the other female characters had more crises, e.g. Jessie’s drug addiction and Kelly’s college boy tryst, on top of steady boyfriends. The lack of love interests for Lisa solidified she wasn’t considered a hottie and that as a Black girl she didn’t deserve love, which mirrors the alleged reactions from her former castmates now.

While the two white girls had boyfriends, Lisa never had one—and only nerdy Screech was interested in her.

Lisa and Screech

Why did Kelly have popular blond guy Zack as her boyfriend? Why did Jessie get muscly football player AC? Because they’re white. Lisa Turtle weirdly could only attract Screech, the annoying nerd who eventually attracted a girlfriend, Violet, played by pre-Beverly Hills 90210 Tori Spelling.

Lisa received a bit of attention, most memorably a Black guy who magically turned up at their high school (Pacific Palisades’ Black population is 0.4%) who turned out to be a freshman. She was a senior. Or the other Black guy who was very studious that Lisa tried to impress him, but he didn’t like her brainless friends, so he was dropped.

Lisa kissed Zack in “The Bayside Triangle” episode before her fashion show in season five, but only because Tiffani-Amber and Elizabeth had left the show. Kelly was out of the picture. The episode poised to make Lisa the star girl where she had the star guy, but that turned to mud soon when producers introduced us to biker chick Tori, played by Leanna Creel. More on that in the next point, but the show couldn’t let Lisa get any love as if because she’s a Black girl at a white school she getting it wouldn’t be believable.

Zack and Lisa

Seeing how Lisa wasn’t able to get a guy with her beauty and fashion didn’t add up correctly for a Black girl viewer. It was offensive, knowing in real life she could have any boy she wanted at the average Los Angeles area high school.

This contrast was to let viewers know Lisa is not ideal girl-next-door material because she’s Black. Comparing Lisa to another iconic Black girl TV character of the era, Laura Winslow of Family Matters. Played by Kellie Shanygne Williams, Laura had the undying devotion of another infamous nerd, Steve Urkel, but she still had her share of romantic interests. It was a Black show with a more interracial production team that understood the popular girl regardless of race can get a boyfriend if she wants.

The only original girl from the show’s previous incarnation, Lisa was pushed to the side to make room for Kelly then Tori.

Back to forgettable Tori. Again, a stereotypical biker chick that Zack suddenly falls for, obviously due to her whiteness. Knowing the character arc of Zack and the type of females he prefers, Tori was not it.

The show evolved into another incarnation with Saved By the Bell: The College Years. Lisa went to the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, so Lark wasn’t a series regular. The show moved to prime time, but when Tiffani-Amber returned, the producers kept the two new white girls and kicked off the Black girl named Danielle Marks, played by Essence Atkins, to make room for Kelly. The removal of the Black girl probably led to the show’s demise after one season since they not only killed the successful recipe but told us a Black girl can’t be a part of the ensemble.

Lisa was an independent single girl but was that due to the strong Black woman stereotype?

The superwoman complex many Black women in the U.S. experience is associated with the shield we wear to present ourselves as strong and stoic. From Lisa’s demeanor, she is the fun-loving girl who also seems boy crazy yet can’t have a boyfriend while her white friends can.

Lark and Mark-Paul dated in real life for three years, but the romance was only placed in the storyline after the other actresses left the show. At the time, interracial teen relationships weren’t there yet. For example, heartthrob white actor Jonathan Brandis and Fresh Prince of Bel-Air Black actress Tatyana Ali dated for three years, but we didn’t hear much about that relationship until years later.

And producers allegedly created Lisa as a rich Jewish girl from New York before Lark aced her audition. Slater was supposed to be Italian until Mario, who’s Latino, stepped into the role (Pacific Palisades’ Latinx population is 3.2%). These characters, originally white, had to be altered to fit their race and culture, but it seems this led to watered-down storylines for Lisa.

In real life, Lark was a part of a TV family, but as a Black woman with a mental illness, she’s out.

Kelly, Lisa, and Jessie

Would the white actresses be treated the same if they had a health condition? Along with Lark, Dustin Diamond has been missing from reunions, possibly due to his sex tape in 2006, subsequent legal trouble, and unauthorized tell-all about the years on the sitcom.

Most of the YouTube commenters on the Dr. Oz videos of Lark’s interview support Lark but also question why her cast family hadn’t reached out to her. One commenter mentioned how the cast supported Elizabeth after her adult role attempt in the 1994 cult classic Showgirls.

In the interview, Dr. Oz mentioned how Lark had been MIA in Hollywood almost immediately after Saved By the Bell. She interrupted him and said she went to college. She also had two soap opera roles in The Bold and the Beautiful and Days of Our Lives. After growing up on a white teen sitcom, she actually transitioned into Black Hollywood.

In the mid-90s, she was engaged to Martin Lawrence at the height of Martin fame and even appeared on an episode. She starred on movies that went into rotation on BET such as Civil Brand and straight-to-DVD films such as Fire and Ice. She had roles in How To Be A Player and How High. She also appeared in several music videos, such as Kenny Lattimore’s “Never Too Busy,” Dru Hill’s “These are The Times,” and Boyz II Men’s “On Bended Knee.”

Lark has said no to reunions in the past like in 2015 when her rep told The Hollywood Reporter her work schedule didn’t permit her to participate in a Jimmy Fallon sketch tribute to the sitcom. She told Dr. Oz this week that it was a triumph for her to leave the house.

The alleged estrangement Lark feels from her ex-castmates shows mental illness can mean unintentional isolation. Friends, even longtime ones, may not know how to cope with the effects and don’t want to add the burden of knowing how to cope, especially when juggling their own families and other friendships. To witness Lark speaking her truth on being left out of the Saved By the Bell‘s ongoing get-togethers, it strikes a chord on how she feels left out and how in reality her character should’ve felt the same way, too.