As an American, it is sometimes impossible (and other times, all too easy), to imagine what we would do – what I would do – if my beloved country was taken over by religious extremists. Malala Yousefzai doesn’t have to imagine; she’s living it. And she has the bullet wounds to prove it. A SWAT…
Abandoned orphan. Cocotte (kept woman) and Couturière. Nazi-lover? Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel did not live an easy nor uncontroversial life. Her parents: mother Jeanne, a landrywoman, and father Albert Chanel, a traveling street vendor, were unmarried at the time of her birth, though persuaded (shotgun marriage?) to formally wed, several children later. When Gabrielle was 12,…
Brazen. Bold. Bawdy. I made myself platinum,but I was born a dirty blonde. Tillie, a Bavarian wanna-be model/actress, and Battlin’ Jack West, a sometime boxer and more frequent street brawler, named their pretty blue-eyed daughter Mary Jane. Born in Brooklyn, New York, on 17 August 1893, a few years after Katie was born and died,…
“… given a choice between hearing my daughter say ‘I’m pregnant’ or ‘I used a condom,’ most mothers would get up in the middle of the night and buy them herself.”
I didn’t meet any angry people. I met people who expressed hurt, frustration, fear for their children, and despair, and yet, were still hopeful. Hopeful that although it seems the justice system had yet again failed, if we gathered together like this, our voices would be heard. That the killing of Trayvon Martin would not be allowed to be just another dead young black swept under the mat and forgotten.