embodied epiphanies

The Underground Railroad, a ten-part limited series out this week from Amazon Prime Video, offers Moonlight director Barry Jenkins’ interpretation of Colson Whitehead’s acclaimed work.

Featuring South African actress Thuso Mbedu as Cora, Aaron Pierre as Caesar and Joel Edgerton as the slave catcher Ridgeway, the adaptation arrives amid a national reckoning on systemic injustice, as well as a renewed debate over cultural depictions of violence against Black bodies.

Available on Amazon Prime Video

Jenkins—like Whitehead in the series’ source material—adopts an unflinching approach to the portrayal of slavery. As writer Camonghne Felix details in Vanity Fair, Jenkins refuses to allow Black trauma [to] be the guiding vehicle of this story. Instead, his narrative is one of Black victory.

taking root

A recent  visit to Ramapo brought wonder | wander | world back to a place of close family 
ties and the first East Coast community we relocated to on our crossover from Northern 
California in 2002.

Rockland County, New York

The college campus and communities have changed and expanded in over a decade but the land, its origins, and its people remain.

William Penn's 1682 treaty with the Lenape
painted by Benjamin West (1771)