On Blackness and other wonders Archives | midnight & indigo

The Devil in the Paisley Dress

T.D. Carter — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 11:12:39 +0000

The smell of bergamot grease and hot iron always brings it back—the sticky, humid pulse of an Alabama Sunday morning. At five years old, my world was a haze of golden-brown skin polished with coconut butter until I shone like a new copper penny. In the kitchen of our Chambers County home, Aunt Mae reigned over the stove. The scent of bacon drifted through the house, thick and salty, colliding with the rich, bitter perfume of “grown-up” coffee. To me, that scent was the smell of opinions and secrets. I longed for a sip of that dark chocolate gold—adults and

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On Delicious Forgetting and Being Invited In

Lauren Lluveras — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 22:48:12 +0000

When I’ve told the story about my cousin’s wedding on a plantation to other Black people, the first question (always asked about the bride) is, “Is she?…” Yes, she is. My cousin, Afro-Puerto Rican, like me, married someone white and their gorgeous celebration was hosted on a plantation in Charleston, South Carolina. The lovers were married right along a river bend, once home to rice paddies, and the reception partially took place inside a remodeled barn that was once central to the labor an enslaved population performed there. Huge oak trees framed the ceremony, their branches heavy with Spanish moss

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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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Why Beauty And I Don’t Get Along

René Hampton — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 02:46:45 +0000

As a child, I used to wear pants on my head. I mean that quite literally. When I was daydreaming and playing pretend, I’d wrap the waistband around my head and secure it with a belt before continuing with my play. The pant legs acted as strands of hair. I threw them back and forth over my shoulder, twisted the legs into a braid, and then undid it all to let my “tresses” fall behind me. When I got older, my brother consistently reminded me of this game I played. I promptly reminded him that he used to join me.

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After Toni Morrison: A Hot Thing

A.T. Mitchell — Mon, 11 May 2026 11:16:27 +0000

She won’t let go until I do. Like jazz. Reaffirming that I am beloved, she sits me in her lap, adopts Maw-maw’s eye, to loose that circle of iron. Then she leads me to the clearing as I cry. Cry to the sound of her calling “What did Toni Morrison teach you?” I was asked this by a professor after a semester of studying Morrison’s Song of Solomon, Beloved, Paradise, and Playing in the Dark. How can I begin to answer such a question? I don’t think I can. And it’s not because I didn’t learn anything, but because what

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Àbíkú

K E Garland — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 22:34:28 +0000

I arranged a reading with a Santería priestess per my sister’s advice. Our ancestors had provided her with divine clarity and when she inquired about messages for me, they said, She is a skeptic. She has to do this herself. A week later, I followed instructions: I dressed in all white, set an unlit white candle nearby, and impatiently waited for the priestess to call. Introductions were short and, within the first five minutes, several spirits appeared as a caucus of cacophony. They overwhelmed the priestess with declarations, laughter, and advice: She comes from a long line of Native Americans.

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If We Must Be Broken, Let It Be With Witness

Christine Michele Estopare — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 12:32:14 +0000

The sky is milky-eye gray over Paramount, Los Angeles. LA has been hurting since the ICE raids started in January 2025, sobbing itself raw over the snatching of dishwashers and middle school kids, teachers and orange pickers. It is a Saturday in the part of June where heat-haze lifts off streets. The people have been gathering since Friday: at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles, on the surrounding by-way streets, and the 101 Freeway. On a street somewhere in Paramount, a young man wearing a yellow motorcycle helmet scoops up a river rock from a nearby pathway, and clutches

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Wigs, Wine, and Wisdom: A Tale of 1960s Black Sisterhood

Toya Qualls-Barnette — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 05:00:56 +0000

Auntie Cee was a real boss, a Human Resources specialist with swag back when Black women were ghosts in corporate board rooms. No blood relation, but as much family as anyone who shared my bloodline. Mom, an insurance agent, met her when they both worked at a Fortune 500 company in the ‘60s and halfway through the ‘70s. Their commonalities and differences molded a journey of lifelong friendship, not without cracks. Besties who stuck together like magnets to metal. Auntie, from a close-knit brood of twelve brothers and sisters, decidedly single with no interest in traditional family life, had never

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The Myth of the Blonde Beyoncé

Victoria Malone — Sun, 11 Jan 2026 05:00:30 +0000

As a four-year-old playing in the living room of my grandmother’s Soviet era apartment in Glazov, I suddenly realized that she probably wished she had a different granddaughter. This realization dawned on me matter-of-factly, as if beamed into my mind from an all-knowing source. I could picture this other granddaughter so clearly. She had smooth, white skin and chubby, rosy cheeks, with two perfect, bright blonde pig tails curling precociously on the sides of her head. Her eyes were a deep and endless blue, framed by perfect long eyelashes. She was the opposite of me, with my brown skin, dark

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