By Sikivu Hutchinson Got her first paying job at ten drying dishes in a tea shop, socking away the white lady proprietor’s bottom of the wishing well pennies in a jam jar. Dream was to buy a record store, own … Continue reading
By Sikivu Hutchinson* Card watched the Little Rock lightning crack through the sky and took another bite of orange. Rind, sticky pulp, seeds and all. An acid plague in his buck teeth. Rind was medicinal, kept the doctor and the … Continue reading
Stage play casting for White Nights, Black Paradise: Taryn Strayer, an African American lesbian accountant in her late 30s-late 40s. Intelligent and reserved. Zephyr Threadgill, a fifty-something African American woman who enjoys her unofficial role as Temple “prosecutor”. Carol, a … Continue reading
By Sikivu Hutchinson What would have been my life is blackness. But here I am on my skateboard. Kick, ride, kick. Black as the rhythm of stones being thrown against a car bumper or respirators sighing in unison, marking time … Continue reading
Sound check. Cochlea peeling feedback. Tuning till doomsday, then more tuning. Roadies flopping and panting across the stage, lion taming cables, speakers, amps. C to E minor was home for her. Shudder, slide, shudder. Then thump the strings with … Continue reading
On Rory: It was the humming that got her. The spontaneous eruptions at the grocery store when Rory was in line with her lethal favorites, a bottle of Jack Beam and a can of creamed corn. The floating slips of … Continue reading
“Those white boys on the major labels would never give an inch to a Negro woman playing race music.” It’s the late 1970s, and ex-Pentecostal Black female electric guitarist Rory Tharpe navigates the cutthroat world of corporate rock, dive … Continue reading
