16 Things To Help You Understand What Happened In Charlottesville

“In his 2007 book The Literature of the Indian Diaspora: Theorizing the Diasporic Imaginary, academic Vijay Mishra writes of the new wave of upwardly mobile South Asian immigrants and their “uneasy postmodern trend towards collapsing diasporic (and historical) differences” in the postcolonial literature they produce. Kaur indeed seems to note little difference between her educated, Western, Indian-Canadian self and her ancestors, or even modern South Asian women of a similar age in rural Punjab. She suggests that the way all South Asian women move through life is universal, uniting herself with them by insistently returning focus to the South Asian female body as a locus of “shame and oppression” in her collection.

While more female South Asian voices are indeed needed in mainstream culture and media, there is something deeply uncomfortable about the self-appointed spokesperson of South Asian womanhood being a privileged young woman from the West who unproblematically claims the experience of the colonized subject as her own, and profits from her invocation of generational trauma. There is no shame in acknowledging the many differences between Kaur’s experience of the world in 2017 and that of a woman living directly under colonial rule in the early 20th century. For example: neither is any more “authentically” South Asian. But it is disingenuous to collect a variety of traumatic narratives and present them to the West as a kind of feminist ethnography under the mantle of confession, while only vaguely acknowledging those whose stories inspired the poetry.”

Read Chiara Giovanni on The Problem With Rupi Kaur

Illustration by Naya Chayenne

“Films like The Incredible Jessica James should not exist to “challenge stereotypes,” aka an itchy and needless mantle of singular representation for an entire demographic. That eponymous girl’s reality is no more or less valid than any other fictional black girl’s — suburban, inner-city, rich, poor, or somewhere in between these points — on the screen. The answer is simply: make more. As many stories as we can get. Make them all.“

Read Bim Adewunmi on The Incredible Jessica James here. 

“I never stopped watching MsVaughn, but I started watching Meechy a lot more. She was darker-skinned than her sister, and her hair type, while still looser than mine, was close enough that I felt I could learn from her. I watched her wash day and detangling videos, buying products she used and recommended.

I studied her twistout technique like I would be quizzed afterward. Meechy was the reason I attempted a Curlformer set. (It came out silky and bouncy on her hair; mine looked like a drowned poodle. Never again.) When she and MsVaughn announced events in their local Chicago, I longed to attend.

Among the hundreds of natural hair channels out there, Meechy wasn’t necessarily innovative or highfalutin. But she was real and funny and charismatic. She always seemed sincere, even when I felt she was selling me something. What did a little sponsored content matter between us? We were “friends.”

In Meechy Monroe, I saw a version of myself: one of the best possible versions I could imagine. Surrounded by love, respected in her chosen field, surviving and thriving. And then it was gone. My tears, which have continued to fall, catching me off guard, are for a life lost senselessly. My tears are for her parents, and her siblings, particularly MsVaughn, who had been the way for me to even “know” Meechy. Because when I looked at her and Meechy, I saw my sister and me.”

—Bim Adewunmi on the death of natural hair blogger Meechy Monroe