Brown Sugar

When I think about poetry, there is one movie that comes to mind. It is my favorite rom-com of all time.

Wait. The Best Man is my other all-time favorite.

And The Wood.

Okay, so I have a lot of favorites, but this one is specific to poetry.

Let’s stay focused.

Released in 2002 and directed by Rick Famuyiwa (who also directed The Wood), everything about Brown Sugar is poetic to me. From the title to the opening credits, I was hooked. Still am.

Sidney and Dre are childhood best friends. Sid is an editor for XXL, a hip-hop magazine, and Dre is a producer at a record company he hates. And from the beginning, it’s all poetry.

It starts at the very beginning with that dope, nostalgic opening featuring artists like Common, Kool G Rap, Pete Rock, Talib Kweli, Big Daddy Kane, Questlove, Black Thought, Method Man, and Russell Simmons — describing how they “fell in love with hip-hop.”

My new favorite question when interviewing poets is to ask them, “When did you first fall in love with poetry?” And, to be clear: I am not asking when you first started writing it or when you were introduced to it. I am asking, when did you know you loved it? So anywho, the question comes from this movie.

Then it goes a step further, paralleling Sidney and Dre’s deep, evolving relationship with hip-hop’s growth from street culture to mainstream art.

We see this couple grow from childhood friends to lovers using hip-hop’s language and history as a central metaphor to express their unspoken feelings for one another.

On top of this, Sidney is a writer penning her first book, a love letter to hip hop.

As the movie progresses, we see that this letter serves not just as a confession of Sid’s love for the music, but also her love for Dre. Sidney’s narration is the poetry, and the poetry is hip-hop and everything in between, acting as both the main and supporting character.

Rather than presenting poetry as a fading art, movies like Love Jones and Brown Sugar show it as something embedded in how we love, speak, and make sense of the world, like an instinct woven into how we feel, remember, and connect.

So…

I am nudging an old tape recorder over to you. The reels inside give a faint rattle before my finger hovers over the record button…

When did you first fall in love with poetry?

Yecheilyah’s 8th Annual

Poetry Contest 2026

This year’s poetry contest is in full swing! Entries are being accepted as we speak.

As we are already halfway through April, and ya’ll know May is gonna fly by too, here are some reminders before June sneaks up on us:

  • When submitting your poem, please do not forget to add your name to the document! I know it sounds like common sense, but you have no idea how many times we have to send pieces back that don’t include a name.
  • Also, for this contest, your piece should be sent as a PDF or Word document.
  • By entering this contest, you retain full ownership of your work. Submission to the contest does not transfer any rights, and your poem will not be reproduced, published, or used beyond contest purposes without your explicit permission.
  • Don’t forget that your poem must touch on our theme in some way. For the full list of rules and guidelines, please click here.
  • Also, cash prizes are only the beginning! We are also doing interviews and social media promo! This is not the year to miss.

What We’re Carrying Now

This year’s theme is “What We’re Carrying Now: We are seeking poems that center on personal loss, collective memory, survival, endurance, or the emotional weight of living in today’s social and political climate.

We are looking for writing that lingers and reminds us why poetry still matters. How have you been processing this moment in history? Bring us the weight you’ve been holding. Bring us the language that knows how to hold it.

This can look like a protest or a prayer, a memory or a breaking point, a quiet confession or a bold declaration.

Examples:

  • Social/Political Climate (e.g., living through turbulent times)
  • Identity & Selfhood (e.g., what it means to carry your identity, race, gender, culture, faith, in today’s world)
  • Ancestry, Memory, Legacy (e.g., carrying the legacy of those who came before you, generational trauma/healing/strength)
  • Survival & Resilience (e.g., small acts of survival, joy, rest, boundaries)
  • Spiritual/Philosophical (e.g., Faith, purpose, or direction in uncertain times)

…and so on.

We did not always have a website for the contest, but now we do! Be sure you are bookmarking it to stay updated on all things contest-related.

Deadline to enter: June 1, 2026.

https://www.yecheilyahsannualpoetrycontest.org/

Yecheilyah’s 8th Annual Poetry Contest Judges: Estefania Lugo

Greetings, Esteemed Poets!

This week, we’ve been rolling out some of the amazing poets who are helping with this year’s contest. Up next is Estefania Lugo.

Estefanía Lugo is a brilliant bilingual creative strategist with a sharp eye for the written word.

She delights in exploring authors’ imaginations and celebrating the richness of their voices.

This contest is not just national but international, and we are honored to have  Estefanía as part of the team!

🫰🏾

If you are on Instagram, please head over to my page here and show her some love!

Reminder: This year’s poetry contest is accepting submissions from now to June 1st!

Theme: “What We’re Carrying Now.”

This theme explores personal loss, collective memory, survival, and the emotional weight of living in today’s world. Through this contest, we are not only uplifting poets, but we are also creating space for community storytelling, reflection, and connection through the arts.

Prizes:

  • 1st Place: $150 Cash Prize
  • Live Instagram Interview with Yecheilyah
  • Winning poem published on The PBS Blog at thepbsblog.com 
  • Social media promotion across all platforms
  • Unlimited bragging rights 😉

For a full list of prizes, including 2nd and 3rd place, please visit the website here.

How to Enter

  • Subscribe to the list here.
  • Read the rules and guidelines on the site.
  • Submit your poem on or before 6/1/26.

Don’t forget to visit and bookmark the website here.

Be sure you are:

Yecheilyah’s 8th Annual Poetry Contest Judges: BrinwiththePen

Greetings, Esteemed Poets!

This week, we are rolling out some of the amazing poets who are helping with this year’s contest. Up next is BrinwiththePen.

Love-centered poet Brinwiththepen inspires safety and inclusion through her poetry and the workshops she facilitates.

Brin joined Atlanta’s poetry community in 2021 and pours into the intentional time and space of writing with The Ink Refill, a monthly poetry writing workshop.

I met her in 2024 when we were both poetry features at the same event. I also got to witness her brilliance at one of her workshops.

We are honored to have Brinwiththepen and her company as part of our judges’ panel for this year’s poetry contest!

🫰🏾

Please help us welcome The Ink Refill to the team!

If you are on Instagram, please head over to @theinkrefill and show her some love!

We have more shout-outs to give. Stay glued.

Reminder: This year’s poetry contest is accepting submissions from now to June 1st!

Theme: “What We’re Carrying Now.”

This theme explores personal loss, collective memory, survival, and the emotional weight of living in today’s world. Through this contest, we are not only uplifting poets, but we are also creating space for community storytelling, reflection, and connection through the arts.

Prizes:

  • 1st Place: $150 Cash Prize
  • Live Instagram Interview with Yecheilyah
  • Winning poem published on The PBS Blog at thepbsblog.com 
  • Social media promotion across all platforms
  • Unlimited bragging rights 😉

For a full list of prizes, including 2nd and 3rd place, please visit the website here.

How to Enter

  • Subscribe to the list here.
  • Read the rules and guidelines on the site.
  • Submit your poem on or before 6/1/26.

Don’t forget to visit and bookmark the website here.

Be sure you are:

Yecheilyah’s 8th Annual Poetry Contest Judges: Joshua “Roses” Clark

Greetings, Esteemed Poets!

Today, we are rolling out some of the amazing poets who are helping with this year’s contest. Up first is Joshua Clark.

Joshua Clark, who goes by Roses, is a Dallas-based spoken word poet, creative specialist, and Texas Chapter Leader of the Poetry Business Network.

He is the CEO of Sculpted Roses Company (@sculptedrosescompany), where his team offers mental health and creative writing workshops, poetry sessions, and public speaking engagements.

We are proud to have Roses and his company as part of our judging panel for this year’s poetry contest!

🫰🏾

Please help us welcome Sculpted Roses Company to the team!

If you are on Instagram, please head over to @sculptedrosescompany and show this brother some love!

We have more shout-outs to give. Stay glued.

Reminder: This year’s poetry contest is accepting submissions from now to June 1st!

Theme: “What We’re Carrying Now.”

This theme explores personal loss, collective memory, survival, and the emotional weight of living in today’s world. Through this contest, we are not only uplifting poets, but we are also creating space for community storytelling, reflection, and connection through the arts.

Prizes:

  • 1st Place: $150 Cash Prize
  • Live Instagram Interview with Yecheilyah
  • Winning poem published on The PBS Blog at thepbsblog.com 
  • Social media promotion across all platforms
  • Unlimited bragging rights 😉

For a full list of prizes, including 2nd and 3rd place, please visit the website here.

How to Enter

  • Subscribe to the list here.
  • Read the rules and guidelines on the site.
  • Submit your poem on or before 6/1/26.

Don’t forget to visit and bookmark the website here.

Be sure you are:

Call for Submissions: Yecheilyah’s 8th Annual Poetry Contest 2026

Greetings, Esteemed Poets!

Happy Poetry Month!!

We are pleased to announce that this year’s poetry contest is now open! Submissions will remain open until June 1, 2026.

Entry: Email Subscription (Free)*

*If you are already subscribed, you can skip this step.

Theme: “What We’re Carrying Now.”

This year’s theme centers on personal loss, collective memory, survival, endurance, and/or the emotional weight of living in today’s social and political climate.

This year, we are asking poets to create a living archive of how they are processing, surviving, and making meaning in this moment in history.

What are you carrying this season? What are we carrying now?

Prizes:

  • 1st Place: $150 Cash Prize
  • Live Instagram Interview with Yecheilyah
  • Winning poem published on The PBS Blog at thepbsblog.com 
  • Social media promotion across all platforms
  • Unlimited bragging rights 😉

For a full list of prizes, including 2nd and 3rd place, please visit the website here.

How to Enter

  • Subscribe to the list here.
  • Submit your poem before 6/1/26.
  • Read the rules and guidelines on the site.

Don’t forget to visit and bookmark the website here.

Be sure you are:

Why Many Black History Accounts on Social Media Are Wrong

We are living in an era where Black history is being erased every day, so I understand the excitement over discovering all the amazing things our people have done.

However, while I love me a good fun fact, I cannot help but notice that many of the Black history memes floating around social media are often grossly inaccurate or lacking context.

And some are flat-out wrong altogether.

And I am not talking about small pages either. Many of your favorite Black history accounts with millions of followers put out false information every day in the name of Black history.

Yes, this includes those on Substack… not really sure why ya’ll think this isn’t also a social media platform.

With a culture so rich and expansive as ours, we really do not need to embellish what we’ve done. The work is already powerful on its own.

Here are just a few things I wish we would explain more deeply. I am starting with this one because someone told me to “Shut up” on Instagram for pointing it out.

Mary Beatrice Kenner invented the maxi pad.

Context:

What Kenner invented was called the sanitary belt and moisture-resistant pocket, which is not exactly the same as our modern disposable menstrual pad.

Kenner’s patent eventually expired, leading people to take credit for her invention. A company also expressed interest but pulled back after learning she was Black.1

If Kenner had not been rejected, it is highly likely that she would have also invented the disposable pad, likely based on her original idea. However, what she invented was not the same as today’s adhesive pad, as many of these posts insinuate without proper context.

Here is a timeline from a website on A short history of modern menstrual products:

  • 1880s–1890s: Early disposable pads were made of cotton and gauze, often marketed to women traveling by land or sea.
  • 1896: Johnson & Johnson marketed “Lister’s Towels: Sanitary Towels for Ladies,” which were a notable early commercial attempt but failed due to social stigma.
  • 1918–1921: Nurses in WWI used high-absorbency wood-pulp bandages, leading to the creation of Kotex, the first successfully marketed disposable pad.
  • 1926: Johnson & Johnson introduced Modess Sanitary Napkins.
  • 1956/1957: Mary Kenner patented an improved adjustable sanitary belt with a moisture-resistant pocket.

What I would change on this timeline, though, is that Kenner’s invention was in the 1920s, but because of racism, the sanitary belt did not come out until the late 1950s.

This is what I mean by adding context or looking deeper into what we read.

Let’s look at another one.

Claudette Colvin was the first to give up her seat before Rosa Parks.

Context:

She was not the first, but one of many. Irene Morgan did it in 19442, and Ida B. Wells did it in 1884.3

There was also Aurelia S. Browder, who did it in April 1955, almost eight months before Rosa Parks’s arrest and a month after Claudette Colvin’s.

History is not the linear event we think it is. There is so much that happened, and so many people it happened to, we might never know about.

What Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks represent is the culmination of many years of work and sacrifice by many different Black women.

And one more.

Lewis Howard Latimer invented the light bulb.

Context:

What Lewis Howard Latimer invented was an improved process for manufacturing carbon filaments for electric light bulbs.

In simpler terms, his invention made using light bulbs in homes and businesses more practical. His filaments could be heated to high temperatures without breaking, resulting in longer-lasting, more efficient, and affordable light bulbs.

These are a few easy ones I thought of because I see them a lot, but there are many more.

Before you sit in the Amen corner of anybody’s Black history post (including mine), make sure the information they are sharing is correct. Google (and Google Scholar) is right there.

  1. Sluby, Patricia C. “BLACK WOMEN AND INVENTIONS.” Women’s History Network News, no. 37, 1993, pp. 4.. ↩︎
  2. Lang, Martin. “Irene Morgan and her Impact on Freedom Riders.” ↩︎
  3. Orr, Nicole. Famous Women in History: Ida B. Wells: Crusader for Justice. Curious Fox Books, 2025. ↩︎

In Joseph’s Shadow Part Two

People knew his father and what he had contributed to the movement. They still spoke Joseph’s name with a kind of reverence, as though saying it might conjure the courage of another time. His photograph—creased at the corners, and yellowed with time, hung in barbershops and church foyers, beside posters for fish fries and gospel concerts.

Every February, Joseph’s face reappeared on classroom walls, a reminder of marches and megaphones, of a generation that refused to bow. For the community, Joseph was history come to life.

For Michael, he was just Dad.

Michael and his friends walked past the bulletin board in the school hallway. There it was again: his father’s face, eyes sharp, mouth set like a promise. Michael paused, thinking about his first days at Lindbloom.

“Ey, Mike! Mike!” a classmate had called. “Yo man, so how is it being famous? What was it like?”

Today, he would tell the person to go to hell, but back then, he just shook his head, a small, polite refusal that spoke louder than words.

Michael kept walking, shoulders tight, mind elsewhere, like the chess match he had lost last night. If he had not been hungover, his opponent would not have stood a chance. He didn’t particularly enjoy the taste of liquor, but it got his mind off thinking about walking in a legend’s shadow.

Tanya carried the legacy easily, quoting speeches and smiling at cameras as if born for the stage. But Michael kept to the edges. He wanted to be noticed for his own quiet triumphs—for the way his mind worked over a chessboard, or how the basketball arced perfectly from his fingertips.

Instead, people only ever asked about “The Movement,” their eyes expectant, as if he held some sacred story he refused to tell.

His father’s name was everywhere, in every conversation, every display, every “remember when” retold by people who seemed to think history lived only in him. Not in Michael. Not in the quiet hours he spent imagining, planning, thinking. They acted like he was Martin Luther King’s son.

So what, his father took part in the Freedom Rides? What did that have to do with him? Michael didn’t care about no Barack Obama either. He wasn’t his Savior. He was just another politician. He swallowed hard, tasting the bitterness of being overlooked for the wrong reasons.

History had chosen him without asking, which is why he couldn’t admit to his friends or himself that he had a crush on a white girl.