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Articles by Aricka Foreman
Sonya Massey's Last Words Were a Prayer Original
Before Sonya Massey repeated “I’m sorry” twice ahead of her execution by law enforcement, she said, “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus.” I’ve heard this preached from the pulpit since I was a small child. It was repeated in my house, nearly a mantra often coupled with glossolalia. My grandmother believes. She is a minister. My mother believes. My mother teaches it to my cousin’s little ones, cupping their fragile hands inside her own, leading them through her recitation until it becomes theirs.
A Request for Accountability in Our Shared Spaces
The Offing hosts the following letter in the tradition of publishing work that improves literary spaces. The Offing supports initiating conversation toward this goal even if we are not immediately connected to events. Those who would like to add their voice to the letter should complete the form located at this link. The Offing staff will update signatories every 2-3 days through December 31, 2023.
Pride: A Retrospective
We are grateful to Aurielle Marie for helping our organization be more accountable to the values we espouse, and we hope their insight sparks robust conversation in more literary communities around belonging, activating personal responsibility, applying lessons, and change as a practice. As a nonprofit, we offer the caveat that this essay series reflects the author’s opinions and lived experience as an organizer and literary citizen.
Q&A with Ryan Lee Wong and Christopher Soto
Ryan Lee Wong’s essay “Six and a Half Ways to Disappear” and Christopher Soto’s poem “Home: A Villanelle” were previously published in The Offing. Donate to The Offing! Our Patreon supporters received early access to the Q&A between The Offing contributors Ryan Lee Wong and Christopher Soto. The Offing pays our contributors, and we appreciate the help of all of our supporters in sustaining our work.
Aricka Foreman, Krista Franklin, avery r. young: "Raising the Dead"
Conversations Three writers on engaging and honoring their ghosts Aricka Foreman, Krista Franklin, avery r. young “THEY RIDICULED AND MOCKED the idea that any smart person could sustain belief in God,” bell hooks writes in her essay “faith, writing, and intellectual work” from her book Remembered Rapture (1999).
After Touching You, I Think of Narcissus Drowning by Leila Chatti - Poems | Academy of American Poets
There will be no stars—the poem has had enough of them. I think we can agree we no longer believe there is anyone in any poem who is just now realizing they are dead, so let’s stop talking about it. The skies of this poem are teeming with winged things, and not a single innominate bird. You’re welcome. Here, no monarchs, no moths, no cicadas doing whatever they do in the trees.
Polycystic Study of Intimacy by Aricka Foreman - Poems | Academy of American Poets
But where do the breasts go first is my question. I understand their fantasies of fleeing south. The winters are loud and long and white and by March, well. I wonder why I’m still in it too. Now the round pits thumb up beneath the skin, tender and hot to the touch, crushed by my new weight. This island I’ve had to make of myself brought a bevy, angered by easy pleasures: sugar, soy sauce, potatoes, ice cream. My love’s language is to make a meal, ask what I can take in, ask what maladies to avoid.
1993: Janet Jackson, Janet — SIXTYEIGHT2OHFIVE
On weekends, my mom would drive us to my grandparents mostly Black suburb, Inkster, MI. We’d sing along to 92.3’s mix of current R&B and throwback classics, watching the landscape change along the highway. I looked forward to the weekend: visits with non-school friends, cousins and uncles. Most importantly, my grandparents had cable which meant I could watch MTV and BET. I enjoyed spending time with my outside-of-school friends.
History, As Written by the Victors
"We Wear the Mask: Butterflies," collage on Jet magazine page, 5in. x 7.5in., 2012 © Krista Franklin Pr[axis] is a multi-genre art space where text and visual exist in play. Whether critical and/or creative, through process writing, ghost dialogue, or inquisitive musing, we publish work that blurs the margins and engages our most interior selves. Every medium, every doorway, is welcome.
A Rousing Discussion
Listening a long time to the exhortations of modern superheroes, I began to hear the murmur of an all-but-erotic expression concerning powerful men and the powerful tensions between them as they vie to control and damage each others’ bodies and ideologies. It’s only the most recent form of Western art’s long-held torch for male bodies—gods, demons and gladiators—achieving intimacy through struggle. i walked away from mankind. from a century of horrors.
In Defense of Fast Girls Who Just Want to Dance | Aricka Foreman
The year I learned my body would betray me, Aaliyah’s self-titled album dropped. Her melodies and sweet Minnie Riperton-like whispers wafted in and through my car as the wind whipped my hair around my face. I felt a kinship, or perhaps a desire to be like her: soft homegirl, more honey than vinegar. Be the girl who sang songs about love and want, though I didn’t know the depth of my well.
Silence Will Not Protect Us
Eleanor Saitta, Black Lives Matter Protests, NYC; December 13, 2014. [IMAGE: a photograph of a young Black boy with a beanie is sitting on a middle-aged Black man’s shoulders in a crowd of what appears to be protestors. The boy is holding up his arms in the “hands-up, don’t shoot” gesture.] Do you see, none of us were ever meant to survive? That is why everything is exploding as it is now. It does not matter if I love you. Wear your armor brazenly. It will give you a running start.
Idolized Princesses
This summer, any doubts regarding the widespread appeal of Wonder Woman were shattered as the character’s long awaited origin film broke numerous box office records. It’s telling that many felt there wasn’t a market for a film about the world’s most famous female superhero. Obviously, these misogynistic notions regarding superheroes have now been dashed. I still remember religiously watching the animated television series Super Friends as a child, and Justice League as a pre-teen.
The Mask of Survival: Black Performance in Dance
Choreographer Camille A. Brown and her namesake company, Camille A. Brown & Dancers, use dance theatre to explore culture, race, and identity in today’s urban America. Brown’s ongoing performance “Trilogy” grapples with internal and external perceptions that Americans have based on identity, and the right and need we all have to claim space in society.
I HAVE QUESTIONS
"Meriam and her Niece" by Graham Crumb © 2010 “Terrorist acts are both the exorbitant mirror of its own violence and the model of a symbolic violence forbidden to it, the only violence it cannot exert – that of its own death.” – Jean Baudrillard, “The Spirit of Terrorism” If Baudrillard is right, then when it comes to Black Americans being killed by police, can police forces across America be considered terrorist organizations?
Communion and Rupture
Jonathan Khoo, “Poetry” (from Angel Island and the United States Immigration Station), 2009. As National Poetry Month comes to a close, The Offing staff shares images that prompt poetic pairings; from high art to internet memes to family photos, the images simultaneously evoke the universal in their literary connection, as well as the intimate in their personal meaning. ◆ Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, New Work.
Slut Lit & Dismantling “The Fallen Woman” | The Offing
“I said that a fallen woman should be forgiven, but I did not say that I could forgive her.
A Statement Against Abusive Behavior in Our Creative Community
We are a group of Black writers and artists, largely women, who have been subjected to sexual harassment, abuse, and assault inside our literary arts community. We write in public defense of all those in this and other literary and artistic communities who have been subjected to such treatment, and those who’ve been silenced by the fear of backlash. We believe that the right to create without fear is fundamental, and must be upheld by the community.
Except, All Of Us
From “This App Is Helping Women Fight Against Street Harassment,” Hunger TV. When Hawley Fogg-Davis writes “Sexual terrorism is an apt description of street harassment. As a young woman you know it will happen, but you never know for certain when or how it will happen,” it’s not conjecture. The landscape of harassment, assault, acts of terror committed against women’s bodies is simultaneously nuanced and glaring. The murder of Janese Talton-Jackson is not the first, and sadly won’t be the last.
Queer As Verb | The Offing
Last week, we were thrilled to feature work from the Cooper Union exhibit Bring Your Own Body: Transgender Between Archives and Aesthetics. As my colleague Mimi Wong noted in her intro, the curation aimed to test “the limits of taxonomic language’s ability to express a range of identities,” but looking over the images, I noticed that much of the figurative work we featured was very white and very [femme].
Dear Crazy | The Offing
Throughout July, The Offing observes National Minority Mental Health Awareness Month with a spotlight, across genres and departments, on work that considers the intersections of race, ethnicity, gender and gender identity, sexual orientation, and mental health and illness. This is one of our spotlighted works. If I told you that you’ve won, would you leave me alone? I overworked myself into a manic episode — the biggest one yet — and I didn’t even know it was happening.
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