The year was 2005. Caroline Elkins, a Harvard Historian, had just come to prominence with a book titled Britain’s Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya. The book chronicled the atrocities that the British colonial empire had committed in pre-independence Kenya. It was a tale of systematic violence involving detention camps, heavily patrolled villages, […]
12 African TV Series to Check Out on Netflix
In recent years, Netflix in the continent has heightened. Netflix’s first African series, Queen Sono, premiered in February 2020. South Africa was the first country that the streaming giant gifted its first Netflix original, a series titled Shadow. Since the company expanded its streaming services to Africa, there have been isolated deals with celebrities like […]
Atlanta Spa Killings and the Intersectional Black Hole
I was looking forward to doing a post on Women’s Month in March, celebrating our achievements in recent years, and reporting on the status of women’s rights both in the USA and globally. But then eight people, including six Asian women, were killed in Atlanta and the wind went out of that idea. Hatred on […]
The Sham of Western Feminine Liberation
Due to recent events, social ills like political radicalism and racial discrimination have dominated the news cycle, temporarily obscuring other urgent problems that still fester in society, even more so with a pandemic raging on. One of these problems is that of gender inequality and the related issues of sexism and misogyny. Gender inequality is […]
Survivors of Gender-Based Violence and the U.S. Policy That Refuses Them
The word “alien” typically conjures up images of glowing, green creatures in otherworldly spaceships. Maybe even Steven Spielberg’s E.T. What seldom comes to mind are images of women fleeing violence, rape, and gang threats in hopes of a safer life across the border. However, this was who former United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions was […]
Best Netflix Documentaries to Watch in 2021
If there has been anything positive to come from the 2020 global pandemic, it’s the ability to shamelessly binge watch TV and not face the wave of guilt brought on by friends who desperately want a night out at the bar. Introverts everywhere can finally sit back with ease knowing that not only are their […]
Your “Model Minority” is Dying
“Chinese are destroying Bay Ridge.” Flyers with this title were found distributed across Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, in June 2020. The flyers went on to describe some of the “crimes” that Chinese in Bay Ridge have “committed”: “junk stores: massage parlors (prostitution), nail salons, 99 cent stores, dirty Chinese restaurants; trashed up streets, bottle collecting, scavenging; coronavirus […]