Llanor Alleyne
Writer | Editor | Artist
This weekend I traveled to a place I know very little about: North Korea. It was not a journey I’d expected to take. In fact, it was on a whim that I downloaded Barbara Demick’s affecting nonfiction book, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, to my Kindle on Saturday night. Earlier in the [...]
This is very impressive.
Today is my 35th birthday. If that number is meant to invoke panic about approaching middle age, sagging body parts, and introspection about where my life is as opposed to where I wish it to be, it has certainly failed. I woke up this morning to the grayest of skies and a mood that can [...]
They are such icons and heroes that, like members of our family, we are comfortable calling them only by their first names. On this day in 1925, Malcolm Little, later to be called Malcolm X, was born in Omaha, Nebraska. Five years later, the playwright Lorraine Hansberry was born in Chicago, Illinois. In their own [...]
There is nothing accidental about the death of Aiyana Stanley Jones. Guns don’t just go off; fingers have to be firmly on triggers. The same way there was nothing accidental about the death of Sean Bell, Amadou Diallo and Patrick Dorismond. I know what the police are like. I once sat in the back of [...]
Today I went in for a second round of eye exams. Three hours later, my eyes dilated to twice their size, I see Dr. P through a teary blur, but his teeth are dazzling and smiling. “The nerve behind your right eye is much larger than the one behind your left, but I can happily [...]
A few weeks ago I woke up and everything in my line of vision was seen through a viscous gray film. The vibrant colors of my rug, the rows and rows of haphazardly shelved books, with their intriguing jackets had become washed out, less lively versions of themselves. I blinked a few times and gradually [...]
Last week, humanitarian foundation Care.org, of which I am a supporter and fan, posted this video on Twitter in celebration of International Women’s Day. It is the extraordinary story of a young Ethiopian girl who runs away at age 8 in a defiant stance against traditional genital mutilation. Returning to the village in her early [...]
That afternoon I remember the strong streaming of the sun through the 20-foot classroom windows. It was after 3 pm and most of the student body of Brooklyn Tech was already making its way out of the building amid overly loud cackles, verbal jabs, and general merriment. I was the only student in the classroom, [...]
I’d heard about it a few weeks ago. Russian ice dance pair, Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin, debuted an original dance program that incorporated face paint and fig leaves at last year’s European Championships. Calling it a melange of Aboriginal cultures (because, you know, all “natives” dance, look, sing, eat, and pray alike), the pair [...]
I‘ll admit that I am exhausted with the topic of race. This is not to say that I agree that we have entered into a mythical post-racial society, but the discussion is so rife with poor judgment calls, poor assessments, and bull-horn bullying that I’ve begun to openly wonder if the language we now use [...]
I’m not going to expound too much on the short film, The Roe Effect, which was written and directed by New Orleans native Kiel Adrian Scott. Suffice to say I was deeply moved and affected by the film, as well as the deft and nuanced directing. Scott could easily have been heavy handed given the [...]
New York-based poet Judith D. Angeles’ first chapbook of poems, He Art: Pieces of a Whole is an intensely personal walk through heart break and the agony of healing. Gathered together by several motifs (food, sheets, tears, screams, smoke) that bind the 13 pieces to each other, He Art opens with the eponymous poem, wasting [...]
I bought Marlon James’ second novel, The Book of Night Women this past summer intending to read it immediately. I made it through the first chapter, which grabbed me by the throat with its straightforward and graphic reflection on bloody childbirth and, perhaps relieved to be released from such a painful beginning, I set the [...]
Today I was excited to see my friend Daniel, who lives in Washington D.C., for many reasons, but the over arching one was to see his face when I played him Madd’s “Maddy Maddy Patrol.” (listen via link below). D. was raised in Dominica (not to confused with the Dominican Republic) but moved to Brooklyn [...]
Over the past few weeks I have had more than my share of good times, especially under the current economic circumstances. Thanks in large part to a visit from an English friend, I got to see the stunning and engrossing musical FELA! and the new David Mamet play, Race, which is just about that. In [...]
In 1996, as I read Sapphire’s graphic and idiosyncratic novel Push, I was in agony. Too much of Claireece Precious Jones’ life was cutting me to the bone and there were times when picking up the novel felt like visiting an all too familiar insane asylum. You see, my mother said things like to me [...]
“What has he done to deserve it?” “This is premature, at best.” –comments on Twitter questioning the validity of today’s Nobel Peace Prize winner Short-term memory is a bedeviling condition. One that plagues many of us when times are better than others. Yes, the U.S. is fighting a two-front war. And yes, war is, in [...]
Like many black women, the road to my current, beloved short and natural do was paved by ironing combs, lye, rollers, finger waves, and braid extensions. Arriving at this satisfied place with my hair wasn’t particularly difficult (I’ve always loved the texture of my natural kinks and burning the skin off my scalp began to [...]
Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. is a free man, but the furor over his arrest is not showing any signs of abating. While I believe the Cambridge police overstepped the bounds of good judgement when they arrested the scholar in his own home, I still find Gates’ new found awareness of racial profiling incredulous and [...]
Yesterday, news of the arrest of Harvard Professor Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. last Thursday hit the news and blog wires with a decidedly loud twang. Gates, arriving home from a trip to China to find his front door jammed, used his shoulder and the aid of his driver to force his way in. A [...]
The whole world is mourning Michael Jackson today and with good reason. The grief that his sudden death evokes has everything to do with his musical presence in our lives and how his songs defined some aspect of our coming of age, at least for my generation (born in the 1970s). Everyone has at least [...]
“LOL, Charles Hamilton is a pussy n*****, got punched by a bitch…” Charles Hamilton must be waking up this morning praying for a better day after facing ridicule yesterday from all corners of the web. I was pretty late to this myself, but comments like the quote above made my back hunch up. After following [...]
In the last few weeks I have been exploring ways to keep writing every day. In addition to the notorious “free write” (taking 15 minutes to just write without stopping), and polishing half-written short stories that I’d set aside ages ago, I have taken to writing microfiction via my new twitter account: @scetches. Although many [...]
