Our Blog Posts
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She Who Must Be Obeyed: Beauty, Power, and the Divine Feminine in Death Becomes Her
By Mary Mba, Ph.D. I’ve watched Death Becomes Her more times than I can count. I’ve taught it in my Women in Film classes for years, always amazed at how this glammed-up, campy 1992 film sparks such serious conversations about aging, beauty, power, and the lengths women are asked to go to remain visible. But
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The Ritual
(modern, meditative, drag/makeup/spiritual glam tone) By Mary Mba, Ph.D. I sharpen my face with light. Draw bone from shadow. Lips from silence. Gender from powder. This is not hiding. This is revelation. Each line I blend resurrects someone I have always been but never been allowed to be. I become a woman— not by birthright,
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My Ethiopian Brother
(For Abera) He came quietly, not like thunder but like spring rain. One moment we were strangers at the African Student Association meeting, the next— he was on the floor building towers of blocks with my children, laughing like he’d known them forever. He never asked if I needed help. He simply showed up. When