Our Black Asses Are In Senseless Times
Welcome to the twenty-third installment of This Black-Ass Life! This week, we’re at the end of our rope and we feel like you all probably want to yell with us, too. Aretha Franklin is gone and we’ve just been sobbing, floods are displacing hundreds of thousands in India, Boko Haram is still out here murdering Nigerian villagers, 22,000 people have been taken to the hospital with heat stroke in Japan because our planet is on fire, and it is now confirmed that Priyanka will be a Jonas (WE PROMISE THIS IS THE LAST TIME WE YELL ABOUT PRIYANKA AND HER BETROTHED).
So this week, we want to talk and yell about everything that feels nonsensical. We’ll keep Other Things light and bright and full of Black girls winning.
Before we get into it, here’s a beautiful quote on the significance of Queen Aretha Franklin for Black women: The reason we mourn her death so deeply, is that she taught us so much about the preciousness of our emotions, our inner worlds and desires. She dared to voice and make public the nuanced, emotionally heterogeneous interiority of Black womanhood, becoming a conduit for articulating the beauty and sensuousness, the rage and the despair, the sadness as well as the joy of Black life transduced through African American female musicianship.”
Don’t forget: We've managed to grow this list thanks to y'all forwarding to friends so please keep it up! If possible, forward this link to subscribe to five friends. And please send us topics you'd like to see covered in the newsletter, texts from your Black-ass people and any Black-Ass anything from around the world and web.
l. The Facts
Here is everything we yelled about this week + some things you may not have seen yet, but want/need to yell about.
Aretha Louise Franklin died on August 16, 2018. Words are insufficient to describe how painful it is to acknowledge that fact. For Black women, Aretha was so much more than the Queen of Soul. She was carefree Black woman before we had a term for it, she gave voice to the millions of us who exist in a perpetual state of present traumatic stress syndrome as a condition of our womaness and our Blackness. But most importantly, she taught us that they don’t have to like us, but they sure as hell had to respect us.
We lost another legend this week, former UN Secretary-General and transformative leader Kofi Annan died at 80.
I (Mitu) am exhausted and tickled by this Omarosa mess at the same damn time *cue Future*. I am neither team Omarosa nor team White Pride Piper, but it is impressive (?) to see that she has successfully looked out for #1 for 14 years. She got tapes AND videos.
Speaking of white people being racist: A White U.S. missionary (newsletter soon come on missionaries!) was arrested in Uganda for yelling at the hotel staff, calling them the n-word and demanding they obey him.
Oh look, a Black man disappointing us: Spike Lee consulted on NYPD ads and collected a neat $219,113 for his work. This may not fit in the senseless category since we been known he’s troublesome. Example: Chiraq.
Finally, Nick Jonas fixed his spirit to call Priyanka Chopra the future Mrs. Jonas. She is really gonna take his name. They’re gonna be the Jonas Bros + Sis.
Why is this important?
We are living in disorienting times where nothing makes sense.
If you are feeling overwhelmed by the times from both the shenanigans of celebrities to global warming and the regime of the Fanta Fascist, know you are not alone, 63 percent of Americans are stressed the fuck out.
As we go through our day to day, it is important to understand that wanting to yell about the current state of the world is A-okay. You are not crazy, this shit is scary and disorienting.
What can my Black Ass do?
First, join us in letting out a woosah as we let this Priyanka/Jonas union go. Remember that Priyanka Chopra once said, “I don’t like the phrase woman of color … I’m a woman, whether I’m white, black, brown, green, blue, or pink — whatever. I think we need to start looking beyond that.” Go ‘head and join the Jonas clan with her queer-baiting husband-to-be.
Take time to be selfish like Queen Serena.
Scream, shout, yell if you must. One of the worse things we can do in these times is keep it all bottled in.
ll. Other Things
Positive notes to stop the yelling ❤️
Heartwarming auntie moment: Aretha Franklin called Ashanti’s mom’s personal phone to warn Ashanti about the germs and SARS in Canada.
In case y’all ain’t know, there’s a Just Gotta Make It remix featuring Aretha and Juvenile (we know Trey Songz is trash, but the intro to this song will always be amazing).
Aretha Franklin was a body-positive icon before body positivity. People hated her sleeveless and backless and braless and she still did it because she loved her body more than folks hated it.
Glynn Turman visited Aretha in her final days and our whole hearts are full. Listen to her body the A Different World theme song, which was written by cast member Dawnn Lewis.
Girls Trip 2 plans are already in the works!
Crazy Rich Asians took the top spot at the Box Office! We implore you to watch this movie. You will laugh. You will cry. You will lust. ALL THE MENS IN THIS MOVIE ARE FINE.
A Rihanna documentary is coming soon that will be centered around the making of her Anti album (which was SHUNNED AT THE GRAMMYS - sorry, done yelling) and the “talent that she is.”
Our Black-Ass song of the week (Jumoke):
Aretha charted 112 songs on the Billboard 100 and she had hundreds more in her discography, so choosing one song was excruciating. I chose People Get Ready (with The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra) because I love a choir, I love a big band, and I LOVE Aretha singing gospel. There’s a lot going on in the song, the crowd, the big band, the choir, but Aretha’s voice emerges singular, yearning, and just takes you to church and back in 4:04.
Things we are looking forward to / things we are not looking forward to:
I (Jumoke) am NOT looking forward to watching any Aretha tributes. They will all be trash. Mitu said anyone singing Aretha is just doing karaoke and we don’t need that. At award shows, I beg producers to just press play on one of her performances as tribute.
(Mitu) look forward to my very first trip to Las Vegas over Labor Day weekend where I will see the Grand Canyon for the first time and more importantly see Mariah Carey in concert. Please expect a report on Mariah’s performance and whether Bryan Tanaka makes an appearance.
lll. Text from a Black-Ass Mama
My (Mitu’s) mama has developed a new habit of sending me the link to her Facebook timeline and just telling me which post she’d like me to look at.
We end with a quote from Aretha from 1970 when she offered to bail out Angela Davis who was arrested on trumped-up charges:
“I know you got to disturb the peace when you can’t get no peace. I’m going to see her free… not because I believe in communism, but because she’s a Black woman and she wants freedom for Black people. I have the money; I got it from Black people—they’ve made me financially able to have it—and I want to use it in ways that will help our people.”
Stay Black, thrive, yell if you need to and we’ll hit your inbox next on September 10 (we’re taking Labor Day off!).