U.S.
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Man in Sound, Man in Place
By Carlos Ulises Decena At age ten, I joined my local troupe of the Asociación de Scouts Dominicanos (Dominican Boy Scout Association) in Santo Domingo....
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The Pulaski Skyway of Our Manhoods
By Edgar Rivera Colón The jet black steel girders arched like aging flexed muscles fill my mind as I remember car rides with my Dad...
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Take the Shackles Off My Feet So I Can Dance*: A Call to End Gender Policing
By Robert Jones, Jr. Real men aren’t polite; politeness is for sissies. Body posturing is everything; real men don’t cross their legs at the knee...
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For Tanya With Love
It has been almost one year since Tanya McDowell was sentenced in a Bridgeport, Connecticut courtroom to five years in prison. Police charged McDowell for...
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An Open Letter to Amanda Marcotte
By Tara L. Conley Dear Amanda. Resting uneasily in this contentious, but necessary space, I write this letter to you. Gloria Anzaldúa calls it a...
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On Beyoncé, Benedict, and the Volition of Women
By Lisa O’Neill At a school mass at my all girls’ Catholic High School, the priest said a homily about chastity, and in particular, sex...
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In Mourning
By Isaiah M. Wooden This…for Hadiya Pendleton. I used...
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It’s a Wrap: After the Academy Awards
The 85th Annual Academy Awards have come and gone. According to some, including my 11-year old daughter Mason (a TFW Collective Member), the show was...
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Sacrifice, Religion and Exclusion: On Parade in Little Saigon
By: Duane Bidwell In 1954, the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision made it clear that “separate” is not “equal” when it...
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Op-Ed: The Dangerous Limits of Race at the Academy Awards
By Roya Rastegar We are far from a “post-racial” society. The films nominated for Best Adapted or Original Screenplays reveal an intensifying compulsion to engage...
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Drunk On A Plane: Or, Why I Loved “Flight”
Almost a decade ago, I eagerly awaited the release of Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby, thinking it was a boxing movie. It wasn’t, really—any more...
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Django in Philly
By Quincy Scott Jones On my last New Year’s Day in Philadelphia, I did what I always do on New Year’s Day in Philadelphia: I...
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"Beasts of the Southern Wild": An Affective Review
I have a confession: I didn’t like Beasts of the Southern Wild. And I don’t fully understand why. Don’t get me wrong; there were a...
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A Sliver of Silver in "Silver Linings Playbook": A Look at Mental Illness in Film
Hollywood is notorious for the ways it presents and brandishes mental health to mass audiences. In the rare instances in which a major motion picture...
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Five Things "The Sessions" Gets Right: Sex and Disability on Screen
So much of criticism, feminist critique included, hinges on highlighting what is wrong. In the case of film reviews, we so often ask what on-screen...
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Black Freaks, Black Fags, Black Dykes: Re-imagining Rebecca Walker’s “Black Cool”
Enter Scene: I am walking in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn—where we do more than die, by the way—rocking a close fade with two parts on the side,...
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Talking Vultures, Humans, and Warm Flesh with Charles Bowden
By Alice Driver Some people we know only through their words. And so it was with author Charles Bowden and his images of bloated bodies,...
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OpEd: The Science of Love Behind the Science of Rape
By: Angela Willey “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” Todd Akin’s now infamous...