Shortly before the birth of my first child nine years ago, while browsing the bookstore for mommy wisdom, I discovered Anne Lamott’s Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year and fell in love with the author and the book. More than any parenting truisms the book might have contained, it was Lamott’s writing style—funny, self-deprecating, and brutally honest—that kept me reading. The big mommy insight I gleaned from Operating Instructions was that I wasn’t quite as neurotic as Anne, so my kid and I would probably be all right.
Mommy blogs are big business these days. A recent Washington Post profile on ur-mommy blogger Heather Armstrong (a.k.a. Dooce) suggested that her site could be raking in up to 40 grand a month. While most mothers who blog are nowhere near as influential (and their sites nowhere near as lucrative), they take pride and satisfaction in the work they do, and the websites they maintain offer valuable community, a sense of connection to other parents, and occasionally a little pocket change.
I knew I was close to home when I started hearing corn crop fungicide commercials on the radio.
I got into Minnesota a day early, because I took a wrong turn leaving Chicago and by the time I called the folks I was supposed to meet up with, they laughed (kindly) and told me to keep heading West, as it would've taken another two hours of backtracking to get there.
(Thank you to the fabulous Joclyn Burell of South End Press for the heads-up on this)
Chica Luna is Now Accepting Applications for the 3rd cycle of the F-Word!
Please spread the word!
Up and running and taking applications for our signature program, The F-Word, a multimedia film justice project for women of color 18 and older. Launched in January 2005, The F-Word has been Chica Luna's way to build the next cadre of socially conscious media makers by recruiting women of color of diverse racial, sexual, economic and linguistic identities, throughout the five boroughs to cultivate their perspectives as media activists.
For a year and a half, participants take part in weekly workshops on media literacy, filmmaking, organizing & advocacy skills and self-healing.
Past F-word participants have directed and produced narrative films on topics as diverse and varied as first love, female MCs, depression and police brutality. Once completing our training, these dynamic women continue to do important and innovative work in the worlds of film and video, along with theater, music and education.
This is the magazine I’ve yearned for ever since I realized how shitty Mademoiselle and Seventeen made me feel. A strongly womanist/feminist magazine for women of color, it succeeds where all others have failed: combining fashion and lifestyle topics with serious sociopolitical analysis in an ethnically diverse setting with both integrity and ads. Two of the editors are former Sassy interns, and it shows in the little things like the record review rating system and more broadly in the ironic co-optation of old-school girl-mag themes.
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