A Journey of Creative and Professional Independence — It’s not a feeling I’ll soon forget. I watch from the corners as the Gumbo Media team finds their clusters among colleagues old and new. They embrace each other, crack jokes, praise each other’s monochrome, brown-toned fits. We’re preparing for a team photoshoot, and we look good, real good. Artists…

A prose poem and video montage honoring the beauty, pain, and power of Black life. — The children are told they are Black. But no one tells them what it means, how heavy its power. The children learn from their elders their capacity for alchemy. Absorb the sun in bronze hues. They explore the world’s pulse at their fingertips, the…

Collective Healing In the Age of COVID-19 — Co-authored by Mary Manning. Part I | March 20, 2020 | By Mary Manning Heard somebody say that dealing with this pandemic is much like going through the stages of grief. This morning, one week into isolation from everyone and everything that once dictated my time and attention, I woke…

Processing Fear and Forgiveness — The house was littered with boxes, walls vacant of their Scandinavian art. The light beamed in from the east, blinding as it bounced off the white walls like a fresh sheet of snow. Emptiness filled this space now. Emptiness and bittersweet memories. It had been only two months since I…

How stopping my car for a stranger changed my perspective on masculinity and service — I drive a couple of blocks and the streets get darker. As I near my Powderhorn home, domestic boulevards overtake the lights of the small commercial center in my rearview. It’s just past 11:30 p.m. Outside of downtown, it’s hard to escape the modesty of urban life in Minneapolis. This…

The reminder so many Black men need. — Dear Johnny - I want you to know that I love you. I suspect these words sound foreign to you, particularly from the lips of another man. The little love you’ve known was bestowed by women. Men are not shown how to love each other. You never acquired this tongue…

A legacy deeper than writing. — “…She moves down an avenue gently buffeted by the familiar and therefore loved images. The dandelions at the base of the telephone pole. Why, she wonders, do people call them weeds? She thought they were pretty. But grownups say, “Miss Dunion keeps her yard so nice. Not a dandelion anywhere.”…

A (Common) Story of Perseverance — We undermine the treatment of violence’s traumatic aftermath in America; the cultural activity of the past half-decade reinforces this. I’m hard-pressed to think of a mass shooting by a white, male perpetrator whose mental health was not invoked as the cause. …

Six-word stories from American students — Over the past school year, I had the extraordinary opportunity to address 7,746 students as a motivational speaker for a global nonprofit organization focused on youth action. I, alongside a tour partner, worked directly with nearly 2,000 of them as a workshop facilitator. The students ranged from ages 10 to…