2013 is going to be the sh-t. I don’t know that for sure, but I’m trying to do what life coaches tell you to and speak my will into existence.
It’s started off well-enough, anyway. On that rooftop in Johannesburg, we get wind of a house party allegedly close by. Johannesburg is like LA in the since that “close” actually means a 30 minute drive.
We—me, Stephie, and Thuli, park in front of a gated home somewhere around 1:30 AM. The house is dark and there’s no music or sound at all. We fear we’ve missed the party on the long ride over. Weird, because Johannesburg, like New York, parties into the wee hours.
Read MoreFor some time, I’ve had a policy of not commenting on the posts I write. As a writer, I choose my words carefully, so that each conveys what I intend. Readers may take my meaning from it, or they may not. Each person brings their perspective to the screen and that naturally effects how they receive the message. I learned many years ago that you can never really tell how a piece will go over with an audience. That said, I’m not at all that surprised that most of the comments on “Not African Enough in Africa” were, well… such a clusterf**k.
Read MoreWhen I was 10 or so, my father won an all-expense paid trip to Senegal. “We’re going to Africa!” my mother gleefully exclaimed. So we took the Amtrak train to New York to fly out of JFK and ignored the warnings of a pending Nor’easter, thinking the sheer and desperate determination of three Black Americans to make it to Africa would hold off the worst of the snow until we were airborne. It didn’t. New York City was shut down for three days, and by the time the airports opened, it didn’t make sense to fly out. We pushed the trip back indefinitely, and never made it. And so began my obsession with Africa, the place my even-tempered mother spoke of like it was some sort of Disneyland for Black people.
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