About Me

pretty-period:

My family is from Nigeria, and my full name is Uzoamaka, which means “The road is good.” Quick lesson: My tribe is Igbo, and you name your kid something that tells your history and hopefully predicts your future. So anyway, in grade school, because my last name started with an A, I was the first in roll call, and nobody ever knew how to pronounce it. So I went home and asked my mother if I could be called Zoe. I remember she was cooking, and in her Nigerian accent she said, “Why?” I said, “Nobody can pronounce it.” Without missing a beat, she said, “If they can learn to say Tchaikovsky and Michelangelo and Dostoyevsky, they can learn to say Uzoamaka.”

“give your daughters difficult names. give your daughters names that command the full use of tongue. my name makes you want to tell me the truth. my name doesn’t allow me to trust anyone that cannot pronounce it right.” - Warsan Shire

#PrettyPeriod

Always reblog…for my daughter.

lamboaddict305:

acometscourse:

alwaysbewoke:

FUCKING ROT RACIST ASSWIPE!!

That gif is super appropriate.

FLORIDA WE GOT IT RIGHT YAASSS, But I BET this shit not even viral

wikitongues:

No matter how many things you want to do, you can only do one thing at a time. -Gullah proverb

This week’s #WeeklyTongue is Gullah/Geechee, in light of US Independence day on the 4th. Gullah is also called “Sea Island Creole” by academics. It’s an English-based creole similar to Jamaican Patois, Trinidadian and other English-based Carribean Creoles. Gullah speakers are found on the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia. The Gullah are descendants of West African slaves. The Gullah and their language are referred to as Gullah in South Carolina whereas they’re called Geechee in Georgia. The Bible has been translated to Gullah too, yet they have little online presence. 

Check out this beautiful video of Caroline speaking Gullah and English from our channel. 

The Gullah are well known for their sweetgrass baskets and their storytelling. One of the stories explains why a cat doesn’t wash his face before breakfast and it goes something along the lines of this…

"Why Bro Cat na da wash e face of e eat e brekwas"

Bro rat fell into Bro Cat’s breakfast and Bro Cat wanted to eat him. Bro Rat saved himself by saying “Maan a nina way roun de edge ob de barrel fa lok ten an a skip an a faal een. Eef you hep me fa git outa ya, I let you eat me fa brekwas” = “Man, I was curious about what was inside the barrel and slipped and fell in. If you help me out, I’ll let you eat me”.

Once Bro Rat was out of the barrel, Bro Cat wanted to eat him but he said that Bro Cat would choke on his wet hairs, so he should sit in the sun to dry. In the mean time, Bro Cat should wash his face. While Bro Cat was washing his face, naturally Bro Rat ran away. This is why cat’s don’t wash their face before breakfast anymore. [Source: Gullah Culture in America]

The origin of the word Gullah is vague, but most historians agree that the Gullah language has African roots.

Here is an impressive collection of Gullah words. http://gullahtours.com/gullah/gullah-words
This page has extra links that are worth looking at too! http://studysc.org/elementary/gullah-culture

Let’s celebrate the beauty of Gullah for this week’s #WeeklyTongue!

(via navigatethestream)

blackourstory:

DO YOU KNOW ABOUT BLACK TULSA? IF NOT… WHY NOT?

This horrific incident has been well documented, everywhere: from YouTube videos of survivor interviews to PBS Lesson Plans for school teachers. Please do your Google diligence:

• From May 30 to June 1, 1921, white citizens of Tulsa bombed burned and shot up the “Little Africa” section of Tulsa FOR 18 HOURS STRAIGHT
• Why would they do that? That same old lame excuse, a Black man supposedly did something to a white woman. But the real reason was ECONOMIC JEALOUSY. Whites may have called it Little Africa derisively, but there is a reason that Black Tulsa is known as Black Wall Street
• In addition to the 300 Blacks killed, and over 1,000 residential homes burned to the ground, also destroyed were:
• The Mt. Zion Baptist Church and five other churches; the Gurley Hotel, Red Wing Hotel, and Midway Hotel; the Tulsa Star and Oklahoma Sun newspaper offices; Dunbar Elementary School; Osborne Monroe’s Roller-Skating Rink; the East End Feed Store; the Y.M.C.A. Cleaners; the Dreamland Theater; a drug store, barbershop, banquet hall, several grocery stores, dentists, lawyers, doctors, and realtors offices; a U.S. Post Office Substation, as well the all-black Frissell Memorial Hospital. All told, marauding gangs of savage whites destroyed 40-square-blocks of Black economic and entrepreneurial prosperity!

64 years after the first bombing of an American city was committed against the Black residents of Tulsa… the second bombing of an American city took place in Philadelphia when the city bombed the black members of the MOVE organization. (see the blackourstory archive for details). 

Isn’t it a shame that 76 after the bombing of Tulsa, when Timothy McVeigh blew up the Murrah Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City, most historically illiterate Americans - including American “journalists” - responded as if it were the first time such a horror had been visited on Oklahoma. If only we knew.

While there are many lessons to be drawn from this, a few questions that stick out to me are these:

• If the answer to Black second-class treatment from whites in America is supposedly to become the ultimate American capitalists…the ‘model minorities’… how do you explain Tulsa 1921?
• For those Black folk who think that the sole answer to Black people’s problems is simply more Blacks becoming business owners and more Blacks spending money with other Blacks… how did that work out for our people in Tulsa in ‘21?
• Considering not only Tulsa, but Rosewood, Florida, and many other thriving all-Black towns that you may know of that all met the same fate at the hands of murderous, envious, lazy crackers… WHEN ARE WE GOING TO ACKNOWLEDGE AND TAKE SERIOUSLY THE IDEA THAT BLACK WEALTH (ESPECIALLY ALL-BLACK WEALTH) WILL NEED TO BE PROTECTED WITH PHYSICAL FORCE?

There is a reason that Marcus Garvey AND Elijah Muhammad had armies of trained Black men as a huge part of their organizations. Many of us Black folk took those great men as jokes, yet NO BLACK LEADERS SINCE THOSE TWO have reached the same heights of economic and ideological success and unity of Black people. 

Not only do we need to LEARN THIS HISTORY, we need to start taking these events men and movements MORE SERIOUSLY, and doing some CRITICAL HISTORICAL ANALYSIS if we are ever to stop being on the bottom rung of every metric in American life. Not just some casual or accidental reading of history; some CRITICAL. HISTORICAL. ANALYSIS.

TULSA 1921 was real. PHILLY 1985 was real. Will it happen again?

Never forget

(via devouringrage)

upyourcactus:

Elizabeth Peña has passed away on October 14, 2014 at the age of 55. The Cuban actress, with a professional career spanning nearly 40 years, left us on the night of October 14 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. She had recently wrapped work on the first season of the El Rey Network’s action series, Matador, where she played the title character’s mother Maritza.

Well known in roles like La Bamba, Rush Hour, I married Dora, Modern Family and the voice of Mirage in the Incredibles.

Great actress R.I.P

(via wocinsolidarity)

dynamicafrica:

Colorized Historical Photos of African-Americans

(via diasporicroots)