This is the second of six reviews chronicling the pseudonymous Fred S. Kreider’s Rikers Island Series, a horror franchise set on present-day Rikers Island. In the first installment we met narrator Nicholas Billings, a rookie guard whose scrupulous recounting of guard life at Rikers is often more grim and terrifying than the book’s horror story, […]
About Uncle Toms
I was at the family home, on 92nd. I was ranting and raving, calling certain black leaders “Uncle Toms.” My dad, who was just a plain working-class carpenter, got angry and said, “Boy, what the HELL you talk’n about!! Don’t you know that the white man is the biggest Uncle Tom on earth!!??” Wow! I […]
Talking about the Green Book
Back in the day, black entertainers could not stay in hotels when they came to Chicago to perform. At our family home at 9201 S. Perry, once Dick Gregory rang the bell. WOW!! I happened to answer it, and I was overwhelmed with surprise. My grandmother wasn’t!! Why? The period of discriminating even against entertainers […]
Loss Prevention
Grey and cloudy days like today make the Bronx look uglier. The streets are strewn with garbage, the sidewalks smeared with dog shit, and some old lady is likely to poke you with her umbrella. Nonetheless my mom has asked me to walk over to the local Western Beef to exchange into paper a heavy […]
Why I hate PC
“NO-LEGGED MOTHERFUCKER!!” I’d left the lunch room at Malcolm X Junior College, in Chicago. I decided to eat my food at one of the tables that were located in the hallway, just outside the lunch room. There was a card game at another table–four black folk. One of them had no legs–literally. It was his […]
Purging with Marie Kondo: The Lack of Joy in Middle-Class American Households
I am captivated by America’s fascination with Marie Kondo. Named Time’s most influential person, Kondo is a 34-year old Japanese millennial (or xennial is it?) and professional home organizer whose books have sold millions of copies. Over the past few years, her company has transformed into a global communications platform spreading the gospel of tidying up […]