Category: Culture

My Bittersweet Pickaninny Dolls: New Orleans Vintage Gambina Dolls, Ninkie, and Jody circa 1700s
African American, Art, Culture, History, Memoir

My Bittersweet Pickaninny Dolls: New Orleans Vintage Gambina Dolls, Ninkie, and Jody circa 1700s

The dolls reminded me of the painful memories and difficulties growing up in New Orleans with what I was told was the wrong color skin and bad short hair, the only difference was that “Ninkie” was cute and only because she was made in the 80. A lot of my feelings were rooted not in hatred for myself but for the absence of dolls that looked like me. Continue reading My Bittersweet Pickaninny Dolls: New Orleans Vintage Gambina Dolls, Ninkie, and Jody circa 1700s

Chitlins aka Chitterlings: My Family’s Holiday Cooking Tradition with Recipe
African American, Culture, Food, Memoir

Chitlins aka Chitterlings: My Family’s Holiday Cooking Tradition with Recipe

Chitterlings are part of my childhood memories my mom and sister both taught me their recipe, my version is a combination of both. The smell reminds me a getting ready to go 😆 to my Auntie or my Momo house. Not very ppl eat them anymore but, I will continue to cook them. With all that said who want some??? My Auntie Grace Hollins not here to eat them all. 😆 Dionne Miller Continue reading Chitlins aka Chitterlings: My Family’s Holiday Cooking Tradition with Recipe

A Juneteenth learning experience in New Orleans
African American, Black History, Culture, Memoir, New Orleans, Non-fiction, Writing

A Juneteenth learning experience in New Orleans

In a country that prides itself on being the “land of the free,” this is just one of our many social differences and falsities, another one of which is, notably, right around the corner: On the 4th of July, Juneteenth is celebrated to honor the day enslaved African Americans in Texas found out they were free two years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. I would learn that some black people thought the 4th of July meant freedom for all people, but this was not the case. July 4th is to celebrate when America declared independence from the British in 1776. Frederick Douglass would pen, “This Fourth is yours, not mine.”

Continue reading A Juneteenth learning experience in New Orleans