Culture Archives | midnight & indigo

I Ain’t Eeemuch Say Nothing: Spiritual Psychosis or Paranormal Magnet

Melanie A. Jones — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 04:00:59 +0000

I wiped your ass before you knew you had one. I didn’t say one mumbling word while sitting on the toilet, but I heard her voice just as clearly as if she were in the room with me. After watching a medium’s TikTok on spirits walking among us, I pondered—again, on the pot; panties and pants around my ankles—exactly how much of me do they really see? Coming from generations of habitual line steppers and boundary crossers, privacy was only needed if you were up to no good and self-advocacy was disrespect that could end with a backhand worthy of

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Recipe for Hope: A Listener’s Guide to RAYE’s THIS MUSIC MAY CONTAIN HOPE.

Quintessa Knight — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 23:34:26 +0000

I met God at a strip mall conjunction of a liquor store-jazz club-Baptist church. Well, not really. It felt like I did at the time; I was actually in a Taco Bell parking lot crying into a chalupa and drowning my feelings into a tequila spiked Baja Blast over a breakup. That, piled onto some terrible job news, it felt like there was nothing in my thirty-something years of existence I had yet conquered or figured out in life. At that moment, my playlist decided I needed some religion and provided it in the form of Genesis by RAYE. It

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The Passage Between Brooklyn and Paris

Brianna Holt — Sun, 31 May 2026 04:00:16 +0000

There are 25 passages in Paris. They’re easy to miss if you don’t know where to look: narrow corridors tucked between buildings, occasionally sealed by glass roofs, often glowing with a kind of diffused light. Some are elegant, lined with antique shops and glazed moldings. Others are so worn they seem to belong to an earlier century. Despite their appearance, they all play the same quiet trick: they move you from one street to another without fully returning you to the city outside. Since moving to Paris, I’ve started to see my relocation as a passage: a place you pass

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Time is Different in Toronto

Udochukwu Chidera — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 04:00:35 +0000

Japa – Migration (Noun) Origin: Yoruba, meaning ‘to run swiftly’ ‘to escape’ Translated from the Nigerian Urban Dictionary The year after the shoot-out cut short the lives of innocent protesters at the Lekki tollgate in Lagos marked the period of mass exodus of many Nigerian citizens. That same year, my cousin was kidnapped. I didn’t wait to be the next victim stuffed in the back of a car like a sack of potatoes; I left. I packed my two suitcases with my dreams, jackets and thermal wears, and was embraced by the cold Canadian wind that rushed into my nostrils

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Nanny’s Cry For Me

Shonda Smith — Mon, 08 Sep 2025 04:00:58 +0000

I never saw Nanny cry. Not even when her humble, eat-off-the-floor-clean basement apartment flooded repeatedly. Back in those terribly inconvenient days, it was normal for all of us—especially my mom, sister, and me—to worry profusely when the weather forecast called for rain, especially heavy ones. We knew any hint of a deluge meant my poor Nanny was in for a day or two of mopping those black-and-white, faux marble, linoleum floors, along with managing garbage bag after garbage bag of trash removal, and prayers for a dry season. A seamstress by trade, my Nanny knew instinctively how to patch things

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Candles in the Window: A Generational Blessing of Hospitality

Lex Dunbar — Wed, 28 May 2025 04:00:15 +0000

For as long as I can remember, my great-grandmother never let a night go by without turning on the electric candlesticks perfectly placed in each window of our home. MumMum, as she was affectionately called, was about 5 feet and 4 inches tall with the most beautiful blemish-free, deep honey-brown skin and a laugh that enveloped her entire body. The joy in her voice when she was with family, or at church, or visiting neighbors would fill the lonely space in the air. MumMum lived life with her arms, hands, and heart wide open. My mother and I moved into

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Iya Agba’s Kenkele

Temitope Famakinwa — Mon, 19 May 2025 22:56:36 +0000

It was a terribly hot September. Though it drizzled now and then, the thick stagnant air of summer refused to give way to the tranquility of autumn. Stubborn tourists trotted the streets in shorts and sleeveless tops, undeterred while the Locals wandered about, glancing at the lifeless grey skies with frustration and concern. That afternoon, nothing deserved pleasantry. The outdoor tent of Sobiro restaurant was packed with a cluster of sweaty impatient customers. Habibat took their orders with practiced grace, resisting the urge to blow herself with her order pad. She considered dashing to the toilet to take off her

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From Eden to Gethsemane, and All the Gardens Thereafter

Sienna Morgan — Wed, 14 May 2025 04:00:32 +0000

What did it mean for a black woman to be an artist in our grandmothers’ time? In our great-grandmothers’ day? It is a question with an answer cruel enough to stop the blood. — Alice Walker My maternal grandmother’s name was Dorothy Chandler Collins. She was born on August 13, 1916. Ma, as we affectionately called her, birthed and raised 13 children, 3 boys, and 10 girls, and had the greenest fingers. Supporting herself and her children as a widow in 1961, she found subsistence in planting and harvesting crops in the fields of Dortches, Battleboro, and Red Oak, North

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The Last Historian in Winston-Salem

Cameryn Hunter — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 04:00:51 +0000

Visiting my grandfather in North Carolina was nothing short of a civic wonderland. Before my feet had even crossed the flaxen welcome mat, I was being ordered, per our routine, to list each U.S. state and capital in alphabetical order. “Let’s hear it, Cheyenne…” he would govern. And, like a soldier appeasing her Lieutenant, I began to rattle names off. “Alabama, Montgomery. Alaska, Juneau. Arizona…Phoenix.” “Go on…” “Arkansas, Little Rock. California, Sacramento. Colorado…Denver.” “Good.” Though granddad’s figure was long and weathered, his mind was unrivaled. To me, he stood something like the old redwood trees in Downtown Cary, tall and

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Carolina Dreaming: Minding My Roots

Regina Cash-Clark — Wed, 26 Mar 2025 04:00:37 +0000

It wasn’t easy growing up so far away from close family. All of my mother’s siblings and her parents lived below the Mason-Dixon line. We’d do our best to stay in touch between the long car rides or flights that brought us closer. But it wasn’t anywhere near the same as living close to them, the way most of my aunts and uncles did in their interconnected and tight-knit community. Over the years, the wires of our old wall-mounted phone became the lifeline, the thread that connected us across the miles, squeezing together the lagging years during calls when my

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