Contemplating the new book, The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, James Baldwin Shaped a Nation. — What does it mean to be a mother? What does it mean to be a Black mother? Those two questions continue to yield entirely different answers in America today. As the biracial mother of a 4-year-old girl with both Asian American and African American roots, and a father from Spain…

Hint: It’s not where you might expect — “Black. Ivory. Shadow.” I repeat the words to make sure I heard them right. “Black. Ivory… Shadow?” “Yeah.” Jasmin Baker, 25, is cracking up. “When I was younger I made it my thing.” She lowers her voice, making it seductive. “Like… yeah. I’m black ivory shadow.” “Right.” Now her boyfriend…

Radical changes in U.S. demographics are reinventing what it means to be multiracial — “Raise your hand if you would see me on the street and think I’m Black?” Several hands went up in an auditorium full of college students. “Okay. What about biracial?” More hands. “Hmm… And what if I wore my hair in an Afro?” Still more hands flew into the air. …

Trust me, I speak from experience — Adapted from The Girl in the Yellow Poncho “Dreaming is a state of psychosis. You know that right?” the late J. Allan Hobson, the ever-contentious professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School told me this years ago when I interviewed him for a magazine article. Widely credited as the father…

My most personal book ever is about to be published. Qué emoción! as we say here in Miami. Hello Friends! Welcome to a new series of posts about my forthcoming book, The Girl in the Yellow Poncho, a family memoir. Over the next few months, you’ll be hearing a lot…

Gone are X-Acto knives and fax machines but not our truth-telling mission — Journalism is an ever-changing, volatile profession right about now. Nothing is as it was when I started out some 30 years ago. To start, there was more money in the flush early 1990s. More time, too. Time for leisurely Manhattan lunches with editors; time to toss ideas back and forth…

An interview with the author of ‘Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen: The Emotional Lives of Black Women’ — We all know about the myth of the super-powered Black superwoman. It’s been ingrained in our consciousness for generations. But is it healthy? Inger Burnett-Zeigler, a clinical psychologist and associate professor at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University, says the strong Black woman mask we wear is an…

It’s disrespectful that three survivors are still living in poverty with no reparations in sight — All eyes are on Tulsa, Oklahoma, this week as the nation remembers the tragic events of May 31 to June 1, 1921, when a White mob killed some 300 Black residents and looted the community known as “Black Wall Street” before burning it to the ground. The official agenda put…

Because a lot of the time, the publisher’s advance just doesn’t cut it — I once received an email from a reader and aspiring author. “How did you get funding to support your book?” she asked. “How did you pay for travel and other resources?” Her question got me thinking. Over the years I’ve received contracts for advances as high as $150,000 (in the…