In LEVEL. More on Medium.
As Black lives haven’t mattered and cities that were one-time citadels of Black excellence have been roiled by manic, racist antagonism, I’ve kept an ear open and eye out for one note of salvation: King Kendrick. The Negus. The good kid in a “m.A.A.d city.” The un-pimped butterfly. …
A few weeks back, as I scrolled through my Instagram feed, I stumbled across an image of a woman in tears. That woman was Bianca Graulau, an acclaimed Puerto Rican reporter celebrated for her coverage of important issues across the island.
Graulau has tackled topics like the paper extinction of…
By the nature of their profession, music stars get elevated.
They’re elevated by the very stage on which they perform, illuminated by bright lights cascading onto them. All of it assists in separating these celebrities from the masses they entertain. It’s as true of hip-hop as any genre — maybe…
Chet Hanks, son of Tom Hanks, has become one of the most polarizing culture vultures across the World Wide Web. And honestly, it was kind of funny at first. You might’ve been able to laugh through dude’s cringe — dubbing himself Chet Haze and White Chocolate, roaring his best renditions…
Roy Wood Jr. is the kind of guy who makes everyone comfortable. He has a talent for making strangers feel as if they grew up with him on his street in Birmingham, Alabama. Even if you have dissimilar viewpoints and values, you’d still want to sit and have a beer…
In March 2020, my wife and I went on our last date outside the house. Here’s the story I want to tell my son about that night and all that happened during his first year of life.
Your mother and I hit up Samantha’s Tap Room in Little Rock’s River…
March is here on the island of Puerto Rico; the sun hangs a little higher in the sky as trade-wind breezes stir the ocean swell. Valentine’s Day has come and gone, and with it, Georgia May’s birthday. She is seven now, with a soft tide of gray hairs encroaching her…
As I write these words, it’s snowing in New York.
It doesn’t snow here where I am, at the tail end of the West Indies. In Puerto Rico, the place where the Caribbean sea sidles up to a pounding Atlantic, my winters can barely be called winters at all.
Instead…
As you drive down Puerto Rico’s Route 466, the Spanish-style houses and roadside panaderías start to peel away. The road buckles and plunges toward a white-capped Atlantic. Seaside cliffs rise, and trees stretch gnarled limbs into a semi-canopy.
Driving farther still, you reach the remnants of a dune sea tracing…
I was only four years old when my family left the U.S. Virgin Islands to pursue the mainland American dream in Florida. Since then, I’ve been back just once, for my cousin’s wedding in 1994. I’m sure it was a beautiful ceremony, but I don’t recall much about the nuptials…
Higher Learning. A publication from Medium for the interested man.
