Letter from the Editor
Folks…it’s been mighty quiet around these parts. For reasons big and small—illness, procrastination, death, COVID hangover, general tomfoolery, depression due to the lack of Appleton 21 in my life— in the year and a half since we delivered Bedroom Bully to the world we’ve taken a few steps back to reflect….
…thankfully, we also found space to rest and recharge our batteries…we’ve revamped and refocused our vision. And we’re kicking off this iteration of our selves with a likkle celebration of that most Caribbean of pastimes: that waistline wuk. Each year as August turns to September—in the aftermath of Barbados’ Crop Over celebrations, Toronto’s Caribana, London’s Notting Hill Carnival and New York’s West Indian Day Parade—my social media feeds throb with vibrant, urgent and insistent images of (mostly) Black and brown bodies workin’ waistlines while taking and making joyous space in an often hostile world…
…and with The Case for Emancipated Waistlines, contributor Natassia Morris makes a compelling case for the spiritual and liberatory power of the wine. I suspect that if you enjoy reading this piece you will enjoy much of what we have to share in the future.
You’ll also note that we did change our name; our current handle, Gangalee, is derived from an old Jamaican patois term that referred to an unruly person before being repurposed in the 1990s by dancehall artist Louie Culture to valorize a rebel or freedom fighter.
Now, we might not be rebels or freedom fighters in these parts, but we’ve all found personal freedoms connecting to (our) roots and truths via the written and spoken word. We hope you roll with us as we continue finding those freedoms.