Viva la Feminista

Chicago is a segregated city. When Martin Luther King Jr brought his nonviolent work to Chicago he was struck by a rock and remarked , "I have seen many demonstrations in the south but I have never seen anything so hostile and so hateful as I’ve seen here today." The shorthand manner to discuss our segregation is to note that the Northside is where you find White Chicagoans and the Southside is where you find Black Chicagoans. The Northside is where you find all the resources whereas on the Southside you find vacant lots and high crimes. There have been countless attempts to bridge this divide. One of the most recent and ingenious is the Folded Map project . Simply put, who lives at 6400 North and 6400 South and how are their lives different or similar. Now comes a stage production of the project brought to us by Collaboraction. This production is part of a larger "Encounter" series that runs through January 27th . There are in fact only 2 more times to see t...

I'll teach my daughter / To bang on anything that makes a beat / She ' ll shake-a-boom, she ' ll quake a room / She ' ll ... She ' ll do all of this . And she ' ll do none of this. And it's funny how we hide behind these daughters , Hide ahead of our own herstories. Scared of ourselves. Today is my mom's 15th birthday since her death. It is the last of the 15-year milestones (15 years since her death, Ella's 15th birthday, 15th Christmas, 15th of my birthday). The woman who instilled in me how special I was, how important I am to the world, and who held me to high standards, should be indulging in a tiny slice of turtle cheesecake for her day. Instead a bit of her ashes sit in a tiny urn on my altar.  She hovers over my life as a sage and cautionary tale.  Dear reader, you may be shocked at how I can hold anger in my heart over her death. Well, I do. I am mostly angry at all the wonderful things she has missed out on, including res...

Yup! It's a hopeful New Year's blog post! All full of spunk and aspirations to write more in the new year. It is also a post to acknowledge that #365FeministSelfie is still a thing and at the start of our sixth year. SIX YEARS!  Part of me can't believe that this is still going strong. Part of me sees all the posts and knows why it is still going strong. I've said it before and I need to say it again, but what started as a silly project ended up creating a conversation and community around feminism and how the media depicts feminists. Yes, we still have articles popping up saying that selfies are dumb, narcissistic, and all that jazz, but selfies are just a medium. Not all selfies are dumb, but not all of them are feminist either. Some are cries for help, but not in the manner that set off this project. I have seen people post selfies asking for support in many different ways for many different scenarios. I am not good at asking for help, especially from those close...

Judy Moody and the Right Royal Tea Party by Megan McDonald My rating: 3 of 5 stars Judy Moody was one of my daughter's favorites. It was weird and sweet to read Judy's return as my daughter is in high school. It actually made me wonder what Judy would be like as a high schooler. In this new tale Judy is just as we left her - impulsive, self-centered, and hilarious. Judy gets the notion that she may be part of the English monarchy. She writes to the Queen (and receives a response!) and begins to align her life with what she imagines royalty would do. It isn't a Judy Moody tale without conflict that forces Judy to apologize to someone. She realizes that her relatives may not quite be royalty. What I like the best about Judy is that she often does something that requires an apology, even if it is to herself. Since these books are meant for kids ages 6-8, it is great to have a beloved character who loves with full passion, sometimes gets carr...

Power to the Princess: 15 Favorite Fairytales Retold with Girl Power by Vita Weinstein Murrow My rating: 5 of 5 stars This beautiful looking book holds some radical retelling of beloved fairy tales. Since my favorite fairy tale and princess is the Little Mermaid, Vita Murrow's retelling hit me the hardest. First of all the Little Mermaid is now a young woman of color. Then her adventures finds her meeting what they call a land princess. No prince in this story! Their cross-cultural exchange is sweet, including how they get the Little Mermaid's grandmother involved. My next favorite is Beauty and the Beast. This retelling does not eliminate the love story between the two, but it does reframe it in a manner that is more feminist than anything Disney has offered us. It also amplifies the strength of Belle that we see in other versions of the tale. And seriously, this book is beautiful. The cover is red cloth with gold embossing. It feels so nice...

Princesses Save the World by Savannah Guthrie My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is a great book if your kids are princesses obsessed and you are tired of the usual princess stories. What starts off as a not-so-spectacular storybook turns into a lesson on the importance of bees, girls working together, and even chemistry. The racial diversity of the princesses gathered to save the world is lovely. Parents often ask me what they can do to sustain their daugther's interest in science. This book might do just that! In order to relocate bees to a land where there are none, the princesses must create an alluring smell. This is when one of them hits the princess lab to create a perfume to lure bees. This is a great subplot to talk about the importance of science, but not in a heavy handed way! Maybe just reinforce that the princess is in a chemistry lab. Maybe a good time to buy your daughter a chemistry kit too? Overall "Princesses Save the World"...

Rose Tico emerged from "The Last Jedi" as the breakout character. Who would have guessed when we saw her zap Finn that so many people would fall in love with her passion for life and dedication for the resistance? Considering that Finn gets under my skin as an annoying brat, ME!! A few weeks ago Kelly Marie Tran wrote a kick ass op-ed in the New York Times about the online harassment that pushed her off Instagram, as well as the importance of Rose Tico to nerds of color: ...the same society that taught some people they were heroes, saviors, inheritors of the Manifest Destiny ideal, taught me I existed only in the background of their stories, doing their nails, diagnosing their illnesses, supporting their love interests — and perhaps the most damaging — waiting for them to rescue me. And for a long time, I believed them. Bomber Command Tran sums up harshly and eloquently why nerds of color need heroes that look like them. I guy came over to my office th...