Herald Recorder
I read Akiba Solomon for the first time in the early 2000s when she was a senior editor at The Source magazine. Although Akiba’s penchant for crafting sentences was on par with some of the greatest scribes of that era, it was her ability to structure capabilities, interviews, and investigative pieces that produced the fledgling young writer in me so jealous. This underappreciated capability to thoughtfully and imaginatively curate and structure prose is most wonderfully on display in her book, Naked: Black Women Bare All About Their Skin, Hair, Hips, Lips, and Other Components. As the existing editorial director of Colorlines, Akiba has written and edited some of the most critical pieces in the nation around intersectional (in)justice. We are incredibly lucky that she agreed to be a part of our Instances Six series.
Two of the inquiries in this series concentrate on memory, love, misogyny, and blackness. Two of the queries place us at 12 years old, the very same age Tamir Rice was when he was gunned down by police in Cleveland Ohio and the exact same age Davia Garth was, who was killed by her stepfather in the similar city. One of the questions asks us think about two extremely required national policy proposals. The final query ponders how black lives can actually matter in 2015. read more…
