by Nancy Laws


I never expected to be the mother to three girls, and I have been told often how sorry people are for me, because it will be a long, arduous journey. There are moments when I have been terrified about having to raise three daughters — if you don't understand this yet, you will one day. What worries me most of all, though, is raising three lost girls.

Last week,  a video of a Black father who assaulted his daughter’s male friend after finding the pair alone together in his home presumably engaging in some form of intimacy, made the rounds on the Internet. The father defends his actions in the video under the guise of wanting “to protect his [17-year-old] daughter;” and since then, many fathers have joined in on the conversation to defend his behavior. On social media, particularly, men have contended in unison that “protection” equates policing when rearing their daughters—further perpetuating the notion that fathers are the de facto authority when it comes to the sex lives of their daughters. But, au contraire sirs (and madams), your daughters will have sex, and there’s absolutely, positively nothing you can do about it… except support and educate her.

I am writing out of anger, fear, caution and concern for your sense of being. Right now you may be to young to understand but I’ve seen you around. I’ve seen you in the airport, I’ve seen your pictures in the media, your father, the son of my mothers brother, has shown me your picture that he keeps in his wallet and today I saw you on the train coming from a Cubs game. And I wonder, how did you end up in the care of that white woman? Did you come through her womb? Were you adopted? Or Are you the daughter of a friend? I wonder what you are thinking? I wonder if you are safe? Are you a victim of micro aggression from other white people? Are you envied by other brown people? Are you bullied at school? What do you think of your self? Do you use that white woman, whose care you are in, as a standard to measure your beauty against? 
Are you whole?

by Alice Rollins

The kitchen in my house was not a magazine cover of cool, stainless steel appliances, granite countertops and cherry wood cabinetry. There were no matching towels, pot holders and kitchen decor. No, my kitchen was, well—old. The walls were covered in smudges made at the hands of myself and my three other siblings. The refrigerator was in desperate need to be replaced and the stove was a battleground between the side of cooking lard stored in a tin can and the food that my mother had prepared on any given night.