takowrites...sometimes

  On Race, Identity and Relationships In our previous chapter, we established a background and a history about myself, private school, coons, and the one guy I met who I thought was a real coon before I got to know him.  This guy was the type of black guy everybody just naturally assumes likes white girls only. Even though he had been blatantly been flirting with me, this all flew over my head because I couldn't even fathom that he was attracted to me. Everybody, me included, still has this impression of him. I screamed myself hoarse during our relationship and like a week after it ended, that everybody had gotten him wrong and misunderstood him, and that I really knew him, and he did like black women. But there was never really any public proof of this, and I couldn't pull out conversations where he'd said he likes Tems, or that he "doesn't discriminate" and finds any woman attractive regardless of race. A friend of mine said on the day he dumped me, "Th...

On Race, Identity and Relationships.    When I was about 15 years old I started going through a bit of an identity crisis. I was a black girl, going to a predominantly black institution (PBI), and I didn't like almost everything that the other black girls liked. I hated Afrobeats, and could only tolerate it in small amounts. I was not big on Gqom or House or eventually amaPiano. I liked 'sad white girl' music and a lot of alternative indie stuff. For context, I was simultaneously going through a pick me crisis but I grew out of that quickly, thank god.    Anyway, I liked Pink Floyd, The Beatles, BRONCHO, Atlas Genius, Tame Impala, Cage The Elephant and so on, you get the gist, liked reading (but not Nora Roberts, Harlen Coben, James Patterson etc, think more Lev Grossman, Neil Stephenson, Neill Gaiman) and was into stuff like fantasy. I could speak and understand Ndebele, which was the dominant language quite perfectly, but because I have and had anxiety I was too af...

Let me tell you a story about a relationship, and a funny lesson I learned after it exploded in my face. A little background: We had the kind of relationship you're so sure will work out because unlike the other couples, who you regard with some kind of scorn, you don't bow down to cisheteronormative norms. We were free liberal people (although I am not a Liberal), both intelligent in our own regard, and much more intelligent as a unit. I did all the readings on how to make a long term relationship work. I thought I'd found it and thank god because I didn't have the energy to spend my 20s and 30s in a frenzy over finding a suitable partner to get married to. He was a 'feminist', I didn't have to spend hours every day lecturing him on women's rights and all the nuances of the movement. I thought we were very high brow, as far as couples go. I knew his family, he knew mine (I was silly enough to think this meant anything) and it felt as if we were really c...