by Monica A. Coleman | Jun 20, 2023 | Blog, Monica's Blog, The Beautiful Mind Blog
I have a friend who asks me every year about what I’m doing for Black History Month. And I always reply: “Nothing, I’m Black every day.” And I mean it. I don’t celebrate Black History Month, but I am happy to be a part of celebrations of Black history – when they...
by Monica A. Coleman | Oct 20, 2022 | Blog, Monica's Blog, The Beautiful Mind Blog
How does it feel to be a problem? W. E. B. DuBois posed this question in the essay “Our Spiritual Strivings” in The Souls of Black Folk. DuBois was referring to the ways in which African Americans were understood by white American society in the early twentieth...
by Monica A. Coleman | Jul 22, 2020 | Blog, Monica's Blog, The Beautiful Mind Blog
July is BIPOC Mental Health Awareness Month. In 2008, mental health communities began recognizing July as Bebe Moore Campbell Minority Mental Health Awareness Month. Campbell was an African American novelist and a fierce advocate for mental health awareness and...
by Monica A. Coleman | Jul 2, 2020 | Blog, Monica's Blog, The Beautiful Mind Blog
Choosing favorite books in one’s field is like asking who your favorite friends are. Good books change my perspective and – at times – transform my soul. Still, I’ve put together a short list of books I like to teach over and over again. Sisters in the Wilderness by...
by Monica A. Coleman | Jun 13, 2020 | Blog, Monica's Blog, The Beautiful Mind Blog
No one is coming to save us! We have to save ourselves. Tananarive Due and I are talking about strategies for surviving and thriving during this hectic times. Inspired by the work of Afrofuturist Octavia E. Butler, we talk about our seven step process for shaping...
by Monica A. Coleman | May 3, 2020 | Blog, Monica's Blog, The Beautiful Mind Blog
In national quarantine and sheltering-in-place or is it “safer-at-home,” all I could think about was that we were living in a scene from the late Afrofuturist writer Octavia Butler’s book Parable of the Sower. So I texted my friend, Afrofuturist...
