Portside

According to data from the Center for Disease Control, black women have long faced high rates of depression and low rates of treatment. “Scandal” has been so groundbreaking in many ways; it’s curious that it hasn’t seized a really ripe, low-hanging opportunity to be more progressive in its depiction of black women’s struggles to safeguard their mental health.

The Palestine poet Jehan Bseiso depicts the desperation of refugees, pushed from home by war--"barrel bombs and Kalashnikovs"--and lured toward a dubious safety by "a little bit of hope."

Writer and activist Sarah Schulman, whose new novel, The Cosmopolitans, tackles race and ageing, explains focus on LGBT lives and how gentrification isn't as simple as it seems. The Cosmopolitans is a beautifully written, page-turning novel about friendship, love, and revenge set in the disappeared world of 1950s New York.

This recently unearthed text portrays the life of a 19th Century African American who spent much of his life in prison. Joy James guides us through this "startling," yet "instructive" book.

Does it matter that stretches of "Miles Ahead"— a gun-rattling, squealing-tire car chase included — came out of the filmmakers’ imagination rather than Davis’s life? Purists may howl, but they’ll also miss the pleasure and point of this playfully impressionistic movie.

Native American chefs and food producers are taking the U.S. dining scene back to its true roots. Native American cuisine focuses on the “pre-contact” or “pre-colonization” foods that naturally existed in this country before Spanish and other immigrants introduced new crops and other goods, which in some areas changed the agricultural landscapes and natural ecosystems dramatically.

Upending the patriarchy was always a part of Powerpuff storylines, as trio demolished villain after cackling villain en route to saving the bumbling Mayor of Townsville (voiced by Tom Kenny). That’s not going to change. If anything, the new series will go further, providing commentary both nostalgic Millennials and younger viewers can grok.

Martin Espada, “The Pablo Neruda of North American poets," according to Sandra Cisneros, turns his critical eye to the persistence of racist murders in our times.

The poet Martin Espada, called the North American Pablo Neruda, turns his eye to the continuing murders of non-white peoples and asks how people in the future will look back at our times, wondering "how we could have lived or died this way, how the descendants of slaves still fled and the descendants of slave-catchers still shot them."

Reading Thomas Frank's new book, Listen, Liberal, or What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?, I was reminded of the snapshot that Oxfam offered us early this year: 62 billionaires now have more wealth than the bottom 50% of the global population, while the richest 1% own more than the other 99% combined...In 2010, it took 388 of the super-rich to equal the holdings of that bottom 50%. At this rate...by 2030, just the top 10 billionaires might do the trick. [*]