black women create

Black Women Create, even from behind prison walls

by Alice Wilder Latoya Dickens and I have been pen pals for a little over a year. In that time, I’ve moved four times. I’ve worked three different jobs and traveled to four different states. But several times a month, without fail, I’ve scooped thick envelopes out of my mail box and unfolded yellow lined pages…

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Black Women Directors is the perfect Tumblr for your summer movie needs

by Joneka Percentie SPARK’s ongoing Black Women Create  project highlights Black women working to create complex characters and fighting limited representation in the film and television industries through writing, directing, and producing. That’s why I was so excited to come across this tumblr called Black Women Directors, which has the same mission. Black Women Directors…

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Black Girl Nerd: an interview with Jamie Broadnax

by Montgomery Jones If there’s anything Issa Rae’s Awkward Black Girl taught me, it’s that awkwardness is colorblind. But for some reason, black women are only ever shown as one way in the media. Words like “awkward,” “shy,” nerdy,” “self aware,” “multi dimensional,”….well those words are never used to describe us. I myself am a…

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Black Women Create: 7 films to watch for

by Joneka Percentie It’s December, which means Oscar predictions are starting and there’s an unsettling and undeniable trend. Some top contenders include Wild (white woman in the wilderness), Exodus: God and Kings (white men and women as Egyptian royalty), Interstellar (white astronauts in space), Gone Girl (psycho white people), Birdman (white people in a play),…

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SPARK Artists: Weaving as art, not just "women's work"

by Annemarie McDaniel This interview is part of our ongoing SPARK Artists series.  Dianne Lake is a current college student at Yale University, involved with consent and sexual respect education and a campus a capella group Shades, which sings music of the African diaspora. I have known Dianne for years, but I first learned about…

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SPARK TV Week: Brittani Nichols' Words With Girls

by Montgomery Jones Issa Rae is something of a legend in the YouTube/webseries community.  Her successful show The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl has garnered positive feedback from The New York Times, Forbes, and viewers around the world.   With masterminds like Shonda Rhimes and Pharrell reaching out to Ms. Rae, it’s safe to say this…

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Black Women Create: Amandla Stenberg gets out from behind the Yellow Wallpaper

by Montgomery Jones and Joneka Percentie In 2012, I won a TV competition to interview the cast of The Hunger Games at the world premiere in Los Angeles,  and that’s when I met Amandla Stenberg.  She was a 13 year old that looked younger than she was and I was an 18 year old that…

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Black Women Create: Tchaiko Omawale wants girls to find Solace

by Joneka Percentie I began my research simply. I rephrased the key search words several times: Black women and eating disorders, eating disorders and Black women, disordered eating among Black women. Each search yielded few results. Very little research has been done on Black women and eating disorders. With hardly any statistics specifically about Black…

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