Am I a (Proud) Southerner?
Am I a “Southerner?” Yesterday’s Talk of the Nation made me want to say, “Yes!” I was in the car with my mom when the segment, “What Does It Mean to Be a Southerner?” aired, and nearly every time someone called in, they said something I had either just said to my mom or that [...]
Breaking Bread Barriers with ‘Soul Food Junkies’
As a child, my weekend breakfast menu was consistent: Aunt Jemimah buttermilk pancakes—with whole milk and margarine in the batter, and fried in more margarine—on Saturday; bacon and/or sausage patties, two buttermilk biscuits, and scrambled eggs with whole milk and lots of salt in the mix on Sunday. These days, if I eat pancakes at [...]
If the Mayans are Right
If the Mayans are right*, and the world does end on Dec. 21, 2012—does anyone else wonder if the end will roll over the earth time zone by time zone?—I’ll be happy that: I don’t have to pay off my student loan after all! I won’t have to worry about health insurance. This pesky [...]
Seeing Sisterhood Change
Many women have felt sorry for me over the years because I have no sisters. (No brothers either, FYI, but not the point of the post.) I recall an incident in college shortly after the sister of one of my roommates had visited. My roommate and I were both primping in front of the bathroom [...]
Pretty Biblical
Sometimes I read posts written as responses to something unusual and esoteric written online and wonder how the respondent found the original elusive piece in the first place. And then in spite of myself, both pieces make me think about my own experiences and its broader applications. So went my mind as I read Britni [...]
At school with the boss’s kids
One day at the grade school That had been ordered To desegregate only, Virginia saw the red clutch bag On my desk next to hers. She did not comment; she only Stared at the purse long enough To indicate she remembered That her mother had cheerfully put The purse in a shopping bag, piled some [...]
Paying respect to The Help
I’ve grown up attending wakes and funerals for people of my grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ generations. At these sad memorials marketed as visitations, going-home celebrations and extemporaneous family reunions, I often saw white people who were somewhere around the age of my mother and her siblings. I wondered who they were and why they were [...]
A day remembered for someone loved
Like the fun but uneventful classroom parties of my elementary school years, most of the Valentine’s Days in my adult life blur together in one unmemorable picture. All except for one.
From Rosa Lee’s Granddaughter
I’ve invited others to share their stories about their own families, and here is the first guest blogger to take me up on it.
The Abram of Owensboro
Domestic work in Louisville at $8 a week was my great-grandmother’s Broadway. God told her to go, and she went.
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Redbone Afropuff & Black GRITS by Mariam Williams is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. ("Redbone Afropuff & Black GRITS" refers to all text and art work on RedboneAfropuff.com created by Mariam Williams.)
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