Ivorian painter Augistin Kassi’s latest exhibition pays homage to his country’s rubenesque women. Although curvaceous women are often celebrated in art, Kassi said he wanted to highlight “big” women to remind them of their beauty. “I wanted to fight the corner for so-called ‘big’ women who in their day were disliked and even imprisoned by…
When you listen to songs today you notice that outside of catchy beats and hooks, music has lost its soul. Gone is the real passion, the depth, the individuality, creativity…the artistry. But every once in awhile someone steps on the scene and takes you by surprise. Like a diamond in the rough, they engulf you…
Back in October of 2008, Gabrielle Smith set a goal for herself: blog about the contributions of black folks in the diaspora for UK’s Black History Month. When the month was up, she decided to keep going and unearthing more treasures across the diaspora for her readers to enjoy. She explains her reasons for curating…
As the waistlines of Americans continue to grow, and many in the health and fitness communities discuss ways to combat this growing epidemic, one groups is always at the center of the debate: black women. If you listened to the media, you’d think all black women were lazy, comfortable being overweight, and more concerned about…
It seems like the media’s favorite whipping boy (for lack of a better term) is black women. From stats telling us we’re fat (despite most Americans being fat) and we’ll never get married, to the startling numbers of black women being infected with damn near every disease under the sun at higher rates than our…
THEESatisfaction is a Seattle-based r&b duo whose music makes us think of Philly soul, Eykah Badu, Ursula Rucker, and the unidentifiable music a DJ would play at a very hip and very black Sunday brunch. The group, which consists of Stasia Irons and Catherine Harris-White, released its first official album awE naturalE in March and the song…
“I was sort of singing in secret, because I was shy about it. I felt like I was exposing myself, in a weird way. I’d hear my parents coming upstairs and I’d feel like I’d done something bad,” 22-year-old upstart soul singer Lianne La Havas tells the Evening Standard. Since bursting on the scene, the…
If we listened to the media, we’d think Africa consisted of nothing but poverty, war, famine, desolate deserts, coups, and inhumane conditions. Luckily, we know better. And with the rise of the Internet, we are privy to people across the African diaspora telling diverse stories of the Motherland. The blog, Africa Is A Country, is…
Over the past few years, the mainstream media seemed to focus its attention on the plight of black women. If you listened to the Washington Post, for instance, you’d think we were all fat and happy, hopelessly single, dying of every disease in the book, and should break our necks to snag a white man…
Photography showcasing black people, especially old black and white photos of people I don’t know, is on the short list of my favorite things about the African-American experience. Fans of this art form explain it in different ways but photography aficionados tend to appreciate the mysterious power surrounding the unknown personal stories of everyday people. Along these…
