C. Shardae Jobson

When listening to Melia Bensussen detail the cities she’s visited and called home, you may catch yourself humming “Where in the world is ... ”.
Except that while Bensussen is a globetrotter, she isn’t a red-caped thief named Carmen Sandiego. The Brookline resident is a lifelong fan, advocate and director of theater.
Her beginnings foretold a life of travel, as she was born in New York City and raised in Mexico City until she returned to the U.S. at age 17. It was her pursuit of a theater care...

After gathering the courage to introduce myself to Valerie Imparato, the artist behind all of the artwork in the solo show Just Because We’re Magic (on view January 12-20th at the Spaceus Annex in East Cambridge), she greeted me with a big, gracious smile and a fabulous wrap atop her head.
Now that I was feeling at ease, while we were otherwise enclosed by extremely talkative guests, Imparato leaned in closer so that she could hear me ask what her favorite piece was.
“I can show it to you!” S...

As little girls watching TV, it was a riot seeing Susie Carmichael because she looked just like us: brown skin and her black hair in braids, swinging about with barrettes on the end. We had already adored viewing the world through the curious minds of the babies on Rugrats. With the addition of Susie, the optimistic heroine against Angelica Pickles‘ antagonistic girl-child wrath (though we loved her too), the increased diversification of the program also felt natural.
Susie and her family fir...

The term “flea market” is lifted and true to its provenance of “marché aux puces.” According to Mental Floss, the phrase was first uttered in France during the 1880s, when shoppers coined it to describe items on sale, such as used furniture, that looked as if they had become sanctuaries for said insects. Despite themselves, shoppers still wanted that dang chair or that plumed hat nearby.
“Flea market” made its Oxford dictionary debut in 1922, and since then certain secondhand experiences have...

At HelloBeautiful, our stance on being pro-Black woman and pro-Black girl are definitely loud and clear, but we do know how to share the love as well. We appreciate any woman who aspires to be great and has made the moves to achieve their dreams to its full potential. And it’s not like we’re not counting the days ’til Hillary announces that 2016 campaign too! But with that being said, former Sony Pictures co-chair(wo)man Amy Pascal‘s deplorable emails about Black stars and their films in Holl...

Miley Cyrus is still riding the wave of a maelstrom of comedic shock and genuine disgust with her raunch-fest performance of “We Can’t Stop,” topped by an unsightly duet with Robin Thicke. Despite all the criticism, the pop princess-gone-wrong has increased her social media net worth, according to an MTV article posted this week. Also, in her own words, the lost Disney daughter finally broke her media silence to announce that she has succeeded in doing what she set out to do: make history.
Bu...

Compliments of Paula Deen, the usage of the N-Word has returned to our social radar. Having taken a few years of nonchalance appeal, not since Nas chose to name his ninth album the epithet “Nig***” (until public outcry had him simplify it to “Untitled”) has the word garnered so much thought and opinion once again.
Due to Deen’s admittance to using the word on multiple occasions, alongside degrading images of African-Americans, it’s been challenged directly towards rappers and hip-hop on why i...

I visited Stand Together: Violence Transformed the day after the terrorist attack at the Tree of Life Synagogue, in Pittsburgh, PA, and earlier that week, the murder of two African-Americans in a Kroger grocery store in Jeffersontown, KY. So to read in the exhibit’s two-paragraph introduction that, “Stand Together…sheds light on the violence, bigotry, and social injustice that seems to at times permeate our current social order and [thus] bring to the forefront shared visions of a tolerant, d...

It doesn’t matter whether you’re in Las Vegas, Detroit, or New York City — a brightly lit marquee takes any and every unsuspecting viewer to that bygone era of when entertainment and pop culture were colloquially referred to as “showbiz” and transfixes all of your attention for the next couple of minutes. Even in the wintertime, against a brute breeze or plenty of snow on the ground, we still pause to look up, gaze and wonder.
That is because marquees can also tell a story; the most magnifice...

I’m about a full day late on hearing Kelly Rowland’s “Dirty Laundry”, but from what I learned online when excitedly scrolling down for updates, this new track from Talk a Good Game would be an extremely autobiographical ballad that finally reveals how she felt about seeing Beyoncé run the world, and revelations of a past abusive relationship. Beyond eager to hear the song, especially after reading some lyrics in which The-Dream, who co-penned, got Kelly to curse out her frustration, I made su...

When news that Danielle Brooks (actress of Orange is the New Black cult fame) would be making a scripted appearance on season 3 of HBO’s hit show GIRLS, cheers of “Finally!” and “It’s about time!” infiltrated some feminist sites, but mainly socially conscious Black blogs.
They were thrilled that for young Black women (and Latinas, as Melonie Diaz has also filmed scenes) their time had come to be taken seriously by a show that previously treated them as if they did not co-exist in a borough as...

While MTV and VH1 have compiled a list of videos that were deemed so controversial, some couldn’t be at all or at least not until a certain time of the day, a majority of those clips came from male artists, but women haven’t strayed away from provocative imagery, such as the icon Madonna and Fiona Apple. Though they’re hard to come by in the realm of hip-hop and R&B, on occasion some of the most popular female artists, on purpose, have pushed the status quo of what is art from the female pers...

It’s easy to stay away from the burden of homework, but to have a goal afterwards and stick to it is another battle. For Smith to pronounce school as irrational was reckless. The only tweet of his with some rudimentary substance was “Education Is Rebellion,” as we could give it a positive twist. In the days of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, being able to express yourself through the written word was one of the ultimate acts of determination and proving oneself to the world. However, i...

I was probably one of very few Black people in America that didn’t entirely attack Stacey Dash for her support of Mitt Romney running for President back in 2012. I don’t pretend that Black Republicans do not exist.

To do so is a disservice to fully understanding the dynamics of the two leading parties in politics. I also assumed, based on her comments, that she may have been like most Americans (misinformed) when it came to Romney’s leadership.

Born and raised in Massachusetts, I was there du...

Brookline native and resident Ilana Greenstein works as an immigration attorney with The Immigration Justice Campaign. [Courtesy Photo/Ilana Greenstein]

The statement “We are a nation of immigrants,” has mainly endured, and occasionally sparked controversy, in the decades since Brookline native John F. Kennedy’s posthumously released book “A Nation of Immigrants,” popularized the adage in 1964.

For Ilana Greenstein, an immigrant attorney and Brookline Village resident, this nation of immigran...