Ekemini Ekpo

Brooklyn

Writer and Critic at Freelance

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Articles

A Year in Property

3 weeks ago | urbanomnibus.net | Ekemini Ekpo

Amy Ching-Yan Lam’s Property Journal is what it sounds like: a 13-month diary recorded through the lens of property.
Love Means Nothing

Aug 25, 2024 | nyra.nyc | Ekemini Ekpo

On any given day at Jackie Robinson Park Playground, you might stumble upon an adolescent drumline competing against speakers blasting an a capella version of SWV’s “Weak” for aural real estate, folks doing tai chi on the handball courts, or little kids learning to play tennis with rackets half their size. You may even run face-first into a rally.
Donja R. Love Inspires Others to End HIV Stigma by Telling Our Stories

Mar 1, 2024 | thebody.com | Ekemini Ekpo

In a 1982 interview, author, filmmaker, and activist Toni Cade Bambara stated, “As a cultural worker who belongs to an oppressed people, my job is to make revolution irresistible.” The power of her statement impressed upon readers that if the severity of injustice alone were enough to inspire radical change, it would be hard to imagine there being anything left to fix.
Write It Out! Demonstrates Proof-Of-Concept With Announcement of Second-Ever Prize Recipient, Matty Mahoski

Dec 1, 2023 | thebody.com | Ekemini Ekpo

On Friday, December 1st, Write It Out!—a previously covered playwriting program for people living with HIV—announced Matty Mahoski as the second-ever recipient of the eponymous Write It Out! Prize.
Write It Out!―a Writing Workshop for People With HIV―Has Its First In-Person Sharing

Nov 28, 2023 | thebody.com | Ekemini Ekpo

Write It Out!, now in its fourth year, continues to traverse new terrain. How? This year with physical programming. As TheBody has previously reported, Write It Out! is a 10-week program for writers living with HIV. Each year, those writers apply to the program to train in creating original plays about anything they desire. Unlike other writing fellowships, no previous experience is required to participate.
Gentrification-Core

Nov 18, 2023 | nyra.nyc | Ekemini Ekpo

I graduated from college in 2020, which means that a global pandemic upended what was already going to be a deeply transitional time of my life. In that haze of existential crises, I decided that I wanted to be an actor. And I knew that if I wanted to be an actor, I might want to live in New York, even if I had only ever spent eighteen hours there, half of them asleep. I’m a Black girl from the South, so after four years in Boston, I wanted to live where the Black folks stayed at.
unbeWEAVEable: A Review of Jaja’s African Hair Braiding

Oct 25, 2023 | keepyourchange.substack.com | Ekemini Ekpo

How do you write about something so close to you? This is the question that Jocelyn Bioh answers so deftly in Jaja’s African Hair Braiding, and it’s the question that I’m trying to answer now. Jaja’s is about Jaja’s, a hair braiding shop at the corner of W 125th and St. Nicholas Avenue.
In ‘Signals,’ the Call Is Coming From Inside the House

Jun 26, 2023 | thebody.com | Ekemini Ekpo

Five monitors sat alongside me, cycling through 50 video interviews from queer “academics, activists, artists, politicians, researchers, and radicals”―including TheBody’s former senior editor, Kenyon Farrow—threaded together in their quest to locate something beyond “tolerance” or “assimilation.” In a world often bent on the erasure and eradication of queerness, Motta is a keeper not only of queer histories, but queer futures.
“If you bring up that dead old white man one mo time.” A Review of Fat Ham

May 24, 2023 | keepyourchange.substack.com | Ekemini Ekpo
Eviction Is an Act of Violence: Interview With Leah Goodridge

Apr 28, 2023 | thebody.com | Ekemini Ekpo