All posts tagged: head wraps

My Black Grandmother Could See Jesus Only as White

My Black Grandmother Could See Jesus Only as White

The Washington, D.C., my sisters and I grew up in was known as Chocolate City for good reason. As Black children in the city then, we were a majority. We sauntered from school to store to home to kickball field, oblivious to our segregation. When I was a tween, and just beginning to be conscious about the giving of gifts, my sisters and I were Christmas shopping at one of the festive pop-up markets in our corner of the city. We found a stellar gift for one of our grandmothers, which we knew for sure she would love. We knew for sure because of her religiosity. No one was more openly devoted to the will of the Lord than Ma Jones, our father’s mother. Mabel Irene Young Jones was her name. She traveled very few miles in her lifetime, and yet she traveled a long way during her 65 years in Northwest Washington, D.C., where she was born, Black and poor, in 1912. When she died, in 1977, she was proud to have obtained with …

Jesmyn Ward: ‘She Who Remembers’

Jesmyn Ward: ‘She Who Remembers’

The Georgia men wake everyone in the drenched dark. The pain of the march simmers through me, and I wipe at my mud-soaked clothing, swipe at the threads of soil in my wounds—all of it futile. We are tired. Even though the Georgia men threaten and harass and whip, we chained and roped women plod. “Aza,” I say, sounding the name of the spirit who wore lightning: “Aza.” Every step jolts up my leg, my spine, my head. Every step, another beat of her name: Aza. Explore the November 2023 Issue Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read. View More We walk down into New Orleans, and each step is a little falling. We leave the lake and the stilted houses behind; the trees reach, swaying and nodding on all sides, and us in the middle of a green hand. When the hand opens, there is a river, a river so wide the people on the other side are small as rabbits, half-frozen in their feed in the midmorning …