Every February, like clockwork, literary institutions— mega-chain bookstores, Amazon, Oprah, and English departments—advertise the urgent necessity of reading a Black writer. Whether it’s Invisible Man, Omeros, or Things Fall Apart, these institutions commodify and repackage Black writers into a promise to the susceptible and well-intentioned reader. The hope? Upon turning[Read More…]
Author: Matthew Molinaro
The Memory of a Bee Sting: Unveiling Black Women’s Anger
Microaggressions are like a bee sting. You can always recover from the sting, but the memory of the pain lasts forever. Microaggressions are the tiny pricks that slowly erode your self-esteem. And, because society deems acts of casual racism acceptable, these pricks persist. People believe it is fine to touch[Read More…]
Black Theatre Workshop’s ‘Diggers’ is a tribute to essential workers
In a town, on a hill, within a graveyard, there are two gravediggers. Solomon (Christian Paul) and Abdul (Chance Jones) live, breathe, and work the graves, day in and day out, weathering torrential rains, pandemic, and death. They are overworked. They are tired. They continue to dig. Solomon and Abdul[Read More…]
Podcasting with BSN’s Soul Talks
Just over a year ago, McGill students Pamela Fankem, U2 Science, and Zoë Anum, U1 Arts, helped launch McGill’s Black Students Network’s (BSN) podcast Soul Talks. By engaging in deep chats on topics like mental health, relationships, and media, Soul Talks has become a space that centres Black discourse and[Read More…]
‘It’s like a lose-lose situation’: Students report lacking accommodations at McGill
Jordan* has been registered for exam accommodations through McGill’s office for Student Accessibility and Achievement (SAA) for approximately a year. At the end of last semester, they wrote their final exams at alternate locations with extra time, as per their accomodations. When grades were released at the end of the[Read More…]
Professor David Austin’s ‘Black Politics in Dark Times’ talk explores history as a methodology
On Feb. 12, a small crowd gathered in the Rare Books Collection in McLennan Library for a talk by David Austin entitled “Black Politics in Dark Times: Revisiting Fear of a Black Nation After Ten Years.” Austin—a McGill alum and professor in the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada[Read More…]
Egbert Gaye’s death leaves a gaping hole in Black anglophone journalism in Quebec
Egbert Gaye, the founder of one of the few Black-run newspapers in Montreal, and the only one to continue to operate over past decades, passed away on June 4, 2023, leaving behind an incredible legacy for Montreal’s Black community. His newspaper, Montreal Community Contact, provides media representation for Montreal’s English-speaking[Read More…]
Reframing nature with Georgia O’Keefe and Henry Moore
The exhibition is not organized temporally. The rooms move from bones to stones, from landscapes to recreations of O’Keeffe’s and Moore’s studios. It weaves and jumps through the 20th century, from New York to Mexico to Scotland, from gastropod shells to irises to pelvises. Georgia O’Keeffe and Henry Moore: Giants[Read More…]
Go Club, Go
Taking pride in silly things is one of life’s little pleasures. Developing a minor god-complex over these same silly things is cautionable. Yet, as founder, captain, and president of my high school Go Club, I held a minor tyranny over a room full of my own classmates weekly—and I turned[Read More…]
Anthropologist and filmmaker Sheila Walker showcases documentary and discusses the plurality of Black communities
Cultural anthropologist and documentary filmmaker Sheila Walker hosted a discussion for McGill faculty members and students on the morning of Feb. 14 on the individuality of Black peoples across the globe, especially outside of the Atlantic world. On the evening of Feb. 14, Walker’s documentary, Familiar Faces, Unexpected Places: A[Read More…]
