Feeling "Some Kinda" Way or Can I borrow #Dwele's horn section?

Since becoming a mother, much of my world view has shifted a tad. Being a motherless woman through the 90s and early 2000s, my womanist acrimony ran rampant against the ills of the patriarchy; the relentless hegemony on my people; the endless persecution of the Diaspora time and time and time again. My former Black, militant, grad school reading marathon rostrum has given way to weariness at times from how far we have strayed. My bourgie babe is growing up in strange times...from silence to leopard print...from the lone token Black girl in the Babysitter's Club series to The Cheetah Girls.

But in a time where I shield my Noodle from Nicki Minaj's "Barbie-face" and give her the fashion sense to steer away from 2T underwear with "Baby Girl" on the ass or the inevitability of toddler Apple Bottom jeans, it makes me feel some kinda way. Some kinda way about how we love our people...What are our intentions when we live in a world where everyone is out to get, rise, come up, win, exploit, destroy, embellish, fake-it-till-you-make-it? Dwele said it best: "Oh...what's your kinda love? Your some kinda love? What's your beautiful?"

There's so much that can muddle a mother's love as one raises their child, much of which is railed into the media we consume. I have been deliberate in my attempts to give my tot airplanes and Hot Wheels with her baby dolls, relish in the fact that her favorite color is yellow (TAKE THAT PINK!), that she openly lauded her afro puffs and braids long before lil Black girls had to wait on Sesame Street to tell them to. But thanks anyway, WE DO LOVE OUR HAIR!

But, I'm still feeling some kinda way about what my bourgie babe and what life has in store for. She won't be able to share with others about her "rise from the hood" story that the media loves to exploit because its not her reality. By then, the memories of Nicki Minaj's "Roman's Revenge" will be as faint as her career because she will have thus reaped the very seeds of her success. I want my Noodle to have her own voice, but still know that her voice shares the same melody as her mom's. The truth she spits is a homage to what I gave life to. If you remember my past revelation of raising myself or what I'd like to call baby mama karma (could be a Ben & Jerry's flavor), teaching the younger generation about heritage is more than just opening a history book and telling them to read. My life is that open book, and from time to time, we have to go back to the reference section in order to contextualize our experiences. Its a matter of teaching respect, a nuanced dance between telling the truth and willing to be wrong at times. I see many of my students wanting respect without learning the virtue of humility and silence. Like Nicki Minaj, they think it might sound cute to make comparisons to themselves as a frightful dungeon dragon (RAWR! RAWR!), but do you realize you are enslaved? Did anybody else catch that? Yet, she lavishes in the attention she gets: "Look at my show footage/ how these girls be spazzin’/
So fuck I look like gettin’ back to a has-been?"

Unfortunately, Minaj's blanket use of Busta Rhymes iconic RAWR does not suggest much deep philosophical digging...or did she even note Bussa Buss' homage to Peter Tosh in the same song...? Eh,...just put this in your pipe and smoke it:

Busta Rhymes - "What's the Scenario" by Tribe Called Quest
Watch, as I combine all the juice from the mind
Heel up, wheel up, bring it back, come rewind
Powerful impact BOOM! from the cannon
Not braggin, try to read my mind just imagine
Vo-cab-u-lary's necessary
When diggin into my library

There's that BOOM again...Once the upcoming generation thinks that we're all a nation of has-beens, then they think we are disposable. Wonder what that scenario will look like when they can't learn from the mistakes of the past or the very history that gave birth to much of the movements and genres they merely dabble with and exploit...makes me feel some kinda way...that leering I felt when I watched Tyler Perry's For Colored Girls, or when I cringe at Beyond Black & White/No Wedding No Womb's critical refrain on Fantasia, or the fact that what we all need is a little more love, a hug or two, a more positive way to ask for attention, and maybe an intense womanist roundtable with crudités and hot tea to get to the solutions of dealing with this generational dissension.

By pointing fingers and essentially, and unconsciously, yelling that we have forgotten to love each other, maybe we just feel we've been left behind, forgotten, lost, isolated, silenced...bullied, forced, poked, and pulled into our own dungeons. Lord knows Fantasia is not part of the problem; she's just one of the many stories we all share and do nothing about it. It all makes me feel some kinda way. Like the fight has left us a bit. Some of us can't even get mad over something like cupcakes gone blackface. They're just toying with us now...a dragon with no fight in them. Some kinda love...


I sure do need Dwele's horn section now more than ever. Hopefully we won't see anymore of his McCafe commercials anymore...the brother needs to get back to the studio. "Some kinda love in the Cafe...?" I do think that's what he said...

Still one of the flyest McDonald's commercials I've seen...

Let's remember, when we start to feel some kinda way about the world our bourgie babes are growing up in, we should not hesitate to express a "kinda love his [or her] kinda love so hopefully our children's, children sons and daughters will hear these expressions of our kinda love."

A Womb Full of Wedding Cake

Its been no secret. I have an intense love of wedding cake and I am always delighted in the occasional invitation I receive. Its not the love of two people joining together that bring me glee...no, its not the potential retail therapy I will partake to find just the right dress for this glorious event...nah, not even the prospects of gossiping about my dear friend's special day, replete with cell phone videos (yes, your love is like the Holy Ghost), pictures (for your viewing pleasure), texts, and Tweets. After all that, its all about the cake for me. I want my cake and eat it, too.

Cliches aside, the wedding cake is one of the most endearing parts of the wedding for me. So much thought and art is put into such an element that will be ultimately shared and devoured by the masses. Married couples have their cake. Sommeliers savor their wine. A death row inmate in his final hour digests his last meal. Kids and their ice cream. Jimmy Dean and his sausage. Love and food...What must be nurtured can be devoured. What we grow, instill, celebrate, revere, and titillate about in this peculiar world cycles around. Sometimes what we endear the most can't be saved from the likes of ourselves.

The No Wedding/No Womb movement exists in this paradigm for me. Started by Christelyn Karazin, it began as a well-meaning dialogue to stop the bastardization of a generation of Black children. Now, cue all the hysterical YouTube videos you've seen in the last 5 years and Essence blogs that critique, delineate, and rally the Black heterosexual relationship...It probably sounded a bit like this: Black woman, you will not get married in your lifetime. Did you ever say to yourself in the last year, "I think Black men hate me." Even Oprah dabbled in Cleveland, Ohio's adopted son's home spun playa-gone-good brand of advice for riveted single Black women.

Steve Harvey became a nation of Black women's heroes and his stock rose so much, Essence's Editor-in-Chief has to call his morning show everyday and get derailed without ever making a full point on the issues that matter most to Black women. But we'll save Essence for another post.

Sure, there must be some confusion when many of these broken-hearted, solutionless women read his book Act Like Lady, Think Like A Man and mulled over lines like, "From the moment we come out of the womb, we're taught to protect, profess, and provide. Communicating, nurturing, listening to problems, and trying to understand them without any obligation to fix them is simply not what boys are raised to do." Well damn...now, what are we going to do? Steve Harvey is telling me that men are coming out the womb with instinctive gender constructs buried in their DNA BUT what do I have to change in order to accommodate these men because I'm trying to finish this race to the altar? Rhetorically, speaking...

I understand Christelyn's perspective. Yes, it is troubling that so many children grow up without their fathers. I was one of the 'fortunate ones' to grow up with both parents though it was not ideal. Like Jon Stewart put it, "Parenthood gives you the opportunity to ruin a human from scratch." But when I see such lines that suggest that Black men shirking their responsibility is equivalent to keeping "scores of black women and their children in emotional and economic enslavement", I was taken aback. Is this more male bashing? Was this an unwarranted attempt to further sever the bonds of the Black love paradigm? Was this an attack on the 'baby mama syndrome' - scores of Black women needlessly, selfishly, willingly opening their legs, and becoming impregnated by a man who had no idea there was a price tag attached to that xy merrying in her womb - that sacred place she obviously doesn't understand it's worth? Ah, yes, the womb. Christelyn defines it as the safe place in which we nurture and that a two parent household "married" to the idea is better than a "single, struggling one".

So, is that what it's about? Is it more about being compensated for our role as mothers than raising well-adjusted bourgie children?

Should we just marry well and THEN we'll be able to have our cake and eat it, too? Or will we be left with having to buy the ingredients, slave in the kitchen all day, ice it, serve it, and never savor in any of its saccharine delight?

I don't think the solution is just marriage but goes further back to acculturating a generation of children who do not know their worth. So much of our worth is tied into how our parents raised us, instilled in us, loved us, taught us, reproached us and how much our community embraced us. As an educator, I see children everyday floating through life "married" to idolatry. Their worth, esteem, and identity is tied into material idolatry.

I remember Christelyn and I had a respectful Twitter exchange about the importance of community as it relates to NWNW. She believes parents are the ones who create the village and I likened it to the "chicken or the egg" debate. We cannot create community if we do not look back to the tiny pieces of our ancestral wisdom, the egg itself, the idea of creating communal values. As Martin Buber believes, we must directly and indirectly accept our past and present, learning to distinguish the individual life from the culture as a whole. He states that once this is distinguished only then can a culture of people


We cannot just approach the issue of out of wedlock births as a danger to our financial and emotional prospects as women. But, most adeptly, Christelyn does refer to the "trauma" these children face and it is often a result of the very emotional trauma placed on the child by the parent. Many believe the "village" concept of raising a child is not working, but it cannot work if we do not "absorb foreign experiences" that will lead to our expansion as a people. Thus, there is more than one way to raise a child. As mothers and fathers, we have to create support systems to keep us sane, to nurture our children when we are absent or in addition to, to offer advice, and to create a community. Much like the blogosphere, we must often seek out others who share our ideals and even challenge us to make us stronger in our convictions or make us rethink our approach; perhaps then we can stop living in fear of who seeks to devour us. Maybe then, we could share in our expertise and rebuild the village that can deal with the challenges we face due to generational neglect.

Now, who's bringing the cake?

The Initial Mother Wit

it has been confirmed. that beautiful blob is my little bourgie baby bka as Lil Bug - gender specific alterations will happen once they are confirmed.

its all a little surreal. my first doctor's visit was very uneventful. talk to dr. haha, get buck naked waist down, and we'll take it from there. when i saw the little blob, a feeling of warmth, literally, came over me. i guess it's that initial motherly love and wit you get, if you truly possess it. i even saw his little arms wiggling...he was just lying there, perhaps talking to God, configuring his life's plan, which he will forget in a few months...

i saw the cutest baby furniture that i'm sure will suit my bourgie baby...i mean how can you have a bourgie baby and you ain't got the color scheme going...i should get my priorities straight, but my so-called middle class values are inhibiting me from thinking practically. we all want our children to have the best, but somehow that never worked in my case. i think i did just fine with "ok" or "slightly damaged" or "irregular" or "mildly dented", even "salvage". why do we create bourgie babies?
but back to that baby furniture...so the color schemes are minty turquoise and chocolate...very neutral, preppy for a boy, retro for a little girl, perfect for mommy - the unofficial pseudo-nursery decorator....well maybe not a nursery, but my bourgie baby will have a room in the apartment which will also suffice as an office...a nook of its own. My unapologetically metrosexual friend-brother, Toby1Kenobi, laughingly told me that strangely, he knew exactly what colors they were and agreed that they were a nice touch...or did he...i just remember him saying something about yellow and blue...as if! Clearly not bourgie enough! Yellow and blue are the colors of necessity and practicality, unisex conglomerations of outfits found at any department store. Minty turquoise and chocolate, that's pizzazz, totally UN-random, not found in bulk and on every shelf. Lil Bug will be a trendy, kick ass, individual - I'll even settle for fashionable eccentric. We shall see (I just have to laugh at myself).

my hubby, whom we'll call Daddy Kaboom, was simply delighted with this blurred picture, but it's so nice that we are sharing this experience together, happily and on purpose. Surely he has that explosive shot that has "gotten" me in this blessed situation despite the nausea and wooziness sent from hell. It has made me the Lesser Phenomenal Woman because "Still, I lie, less phenomenally, in sickness, I lie in wake..."

I write myself down in blog's history/
With my bitter, frank truths/
I may fly in nausea's pursuit/
And still, like phlegm, I lie...

Meme