Arts & Culture

WILLIAMS | Latasha’s Life

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The country knew Latasha Harlins primarily by the grainy image broadcasted again and again on the courtroom television and on national news networks: a tussle between Latasha and the proprietor of that Los Angeles convenience store in 1991; a harrowing bang when the shopkeeper pulled the trigger of a gun she took from beneath the counter, and fired a deadly shot into the back of Latasha’s head. The proprietor had mistakenly assumed that Latasha intended to steal a carton of orange juice, and shot her after the physical altercation that ensued, after Latasha had placed the orange juice on the counter, and after she began walking away. Though it’s been 33 years since the 15-year-old was killed, Latasha is on my mind; I recently read a chapter from Brenda E. Stevenson’s The Contested Murder of Latasha Harlins for my American Studies course, History of the Cops: Racialized Policing in the U.S. Gripped by Stevenson’s recounting of Soon Ja Du’s trial — and the key role that that grainy surveillance video of the shooting played in the proceedings — I stumbled on an altogether different videographic representation of Latasha Harlins — her life, not her death: Sophia Nahli Allison’s A Love Song for Latasha (2020). In the brief documentary film, Allison practices a sort of past and present Afro-futurism that entreats us to imagine how Latasha’s young life might have bloomed. The film is palpable, dreamlike, with images of shoes tossed over telephone wires and Black girls’ gap-toothed smiles, alongside oral histories from Latasha’s cousin, Shinese, and her best friend, Ty.

Arts & Culture

WILLIAMS | Between Seasons, From Green Town to Boston

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Douglas Spaulding is alive. All at once, he feels the grass “[whisper] under his body,” the wind “[sigh] over his shelled ears”: “He heard the twin hearts beating in each ear, the third heart beating in his throat, the two hearts throbbing his wrists, the real heart pounding his chest. The million pores on his body opened. I’m really alive! he thought.

Arts & Culture

WILLIAMS | Light in Boston

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I was depressed in Chicago when I did the interview. I sat bleary-eyed in front of my computer screen trying, and so desperately failing, to look as animated as possible. The position was as an assistant for a high school journalism program at an Ivy League university. My job would be to invite speakers from the journalism industry, coordinate travel and lunches, shepherd the students around campus and ultimately scaffold the program from conception to execution. “What stories have you been following in the news?” the interviewers asked.

Arts & Culture

WILLIAMS | Art Humanizes Currently and Formerly Incarcerated People

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Isaac Scott has an unconventional resume. As a young man (born and raised) in Harlem, NY, searching for a father figure, he turned to drug dealing and street life. He cycled through home, streets and school until he gained his associate’s in 2004, but could not afford the small cost for his cap and gown. Frustrated, hurt, he turned back to the streets and spent 9 years in prison, where he learned vocational trades but was also introduced to visual art as a means of financial sustenance and emotional coping. When he left prison in 2014, he founded an arts and advocacy group called Isaac’s Quarterly, majored in Visual Arts at Columbia University, became an ordained minister and is currently working toward his masters of divinity in youth and family ministries at Liberty University.

Arts & Culture

WILLIAMS | Beyond Burnout: The Untold Story of Queer Intimacy on Dating Apps

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I didn’t think C was the love of my life. I didn’t even think she was going to be my girlfriend. But I was happy to be there, walking side by side beneath the warm lights of Chicago’s French Market, still giggling and swaying under the influence of a first date’s customarily sweet awkwardness. Those who suffer from dating burnout, a term describing the hopelessness and cynicism daters often feel about finding long-lasting love — especially in the age of dating apps — might wonder at my willingness to go out with a woman from Tinder, even while thinking that she would not be my person. For many, that knowledge contradicts the purpose of going on the date in the first place — to receive a return on the investment of a perfectly curated profile, a couple of days of messaging beforehand, a well-groomed appearance on the day of the date and ultimately to settle down.