• Culture

    African Culture, Women and Religion

    It is a common practice for Africans in Christianity to mix their culture with the religion. There are some practices women become subjected to when cultural ideologies are mixed with religion. These practices are claimed to be biblical, but if really examined, we will find they are convenient additions that perfectly suits a male dominated society. Women have constantly fallen victims of many cultural based religious practices that are set to marginalize them. Do we really think that God’s vision for women is to slave away in a man’s house, or that women’s education should become secondary to that of their male counterparts? or that women should have no opinions or voice,…

  • Culture

    Why I Love The Web Series _ An African City

    An African City is the most non stereotypical portrayal of African women I have seen in a long time. Are these characters representative of all urban African women? certainly not, but they do cover a large demographic of them who are not often shown in mass culture. As I mentioned in another post, African women are diverse, our differences includes culture, class, education, and exposure. One size does not fit all, some African women are rich and some are poor, some are educated and some are illiterates, some are autonomous and some are not, some are like Ifemelu and some are like Kosi (you know what I mean if you’ve read Americanah).…

  • Culture

    Stop the Label

    For a long time, I’ve tried to stay clear of the subject of racism because it seems very typical for a black writer to write about race. For a black person, everything seems to be centered around that one subject. We can’t seem to live a life free from the subject of race. So I try to not fall into that stereotype of black writers writing about race, but I’m finding that it’s impossible not to talk about race, especially when racism is just so glaring. The mere fact that I’ll be identified as a “black writer” not “a writer” already puts me in a box that places my work…

  • Culture

    This too is America

    We are artists, we paint pictures of gold and pearl laid streets. We are writers with the most descriptive and convincing words of persuasion. We are grout in the making, we tell stories of a place we only wished was as we had imagined. But instead, we have a world upon which reality prevails, waking us from that beautiful trance and robbing us of that dream we would so love to hold on to. And so we hate reality, we hate the dirty streets with its dust and awful stench, we hate the subways, the endless rides on the trains with the loud chatters of people who behave just like…