Welcome to the New Black Renaissance

“They were hard-edged, soft-centered, brutally demanding, and easily pleases, these women of Brewster place. They came, they went, grew up and grew old beyond their years. Like an ebony phoenix, each in her own time and with her own season had a story.” I’d rather be reading The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor than going grocery shopping. The Women of Brewster Place weaves the tale of seven women and the circumstances that led them to the community dubbed Brewster Place. Brewster Place was a housing development that was destined to be an unfortunate place since the people linked to its creation are all corrupt. Despite the secrecy surrounding its development, Brewster Place is the end destination for these women. Mattie Michael, Etta Mae Johnson, Lucielia “Ciel” Turner, Melanie “Kiswana” Browne, Cora Lee, Lorraine, and Theresa’s lives are explored in short stories that chronicle the ups and downs many women of color face. The life history of Brewster Place comes to re...

Olivia Pope and Annalise Keating have represented strength, grace, intelligence, and power for the combined 11 seasons that they’ve shared the ABC network. They gave women an opportunity to have a stance in two worlds that are generally demanded by men. But they gave black women hope . It’s not often that black women are represented on television as high-powered with influence and intellect that propels them to succeed in their every endeavor. We are the angry black woman, a stereotype that leaked into media after we were branded with it during our everyday lives. And although the idea of a black woman being the chief of staff to two presidents and a black woman being a law professor while practicing law and rarely losing cases doesn’t seem ordinary by the standards of many in this nation, Kerry Washington and Viola Davis make you believe that it’s possible. So, in Scandal’s final season and at the peak of How to Get Away with Murder’s success, we finally get TWO crossover episode...