Crystal Good

1 week ago | blackbygod.org | Crystal Good

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... I’ve always said: I do not cook. So when I was asked to write a poem for the Spinster’s Measure and Pour album, prompted by the question, “If you made music the way you cook, what would it sound like?”—I paused. Then I wrote:“I do not cook. I do not cook.”But I’ve started to wonder if that was ever really true. Last night, I attended the James Beard Awards in Chicago—for the third time. But this time, I didn’t feel like I was just watching.

2 weeks ago | blackbygod.org | Crystal Good

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... By Crystal Good | No Menthol Sunday 2025I started smoking to be a bad girl. Young. I had troubles in my youth—things I didn’t have the language for then. Smoking felt like control. It felt like rebellion. I thought it would turn heads, spark questions—make people ask, Why is she smoking? But nobody asked. And so, smoking just became part of me. It became my break from the world—a moment of peace away from kids, work, and stress.

2 weeks ago | blackbygod.org | Crystal Good

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... By Crystal Good | June 2025 | CommentaryI love a good Black festival—music in the park, barbecue smoke in the air, vendors lined up, elders in lawn chairs, and kids with red popsicles running wild. That’s church. That’s community. That’s us. So when Juneteenth festivals get canceled—when funding disappears, support dries up, and organizers are left hanging—I get mad. You should, too.

2 weeks ago | blackbygod.org | Crystal Good

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... By Dr. Alan Letton & Dr. Clint ArnoldYears ago, I was reading “Decolonizing Wealth, Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance” by Edgar Villanueva. Villanueva explains how the concepts of economic control have incorporated themselves into the everyday practice of philanthropic funding in our institutional systems.

2 weeks ago | blackbygod.org | Crystal Good

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... A deepfake is a video, image, or audio clip created using artificial intelligence to falsely make someone appear to say or do something they never did. These digital forgeries are becoming more sophisticated—and more dangerous to ignore. Our latest article, Who Is Ibrahim Traoré? Deepfakes, Disinformation, and What Appalachia Can Learn, was inspired by a viral video that turned out to be a deepfake.