1. Helese’s Writing Samples
Type: Theatre Review, published
Description: Review of a play that explores race and relationships.
Uncle Tom vs. Uncle Sam, produced, written and directed by Bless ji Jaja, touches on old
paradigm problems in the current backdrop of gentrified Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. The play
is up at the perfect time, on the tail end of the of the Zimmerman trial media frenzy,
and it clearly reflects where we are today as a society in our race consciousness. We live
in an era where we can choose partners of any race for any reason and live out loud in
our choices, and as interracial couples we have a choice to adopt a white child even if
one partner is Black. Most importantly we can choose how we look at our relationships:
do they provide a comfy cover up for our realest fears, or do they draw them out to the
surface for us to deal with them head on?
Read the full article:
http://www.blackstarnews.com/entertainment/theater/uncle-tom-vs-uncle-sam-ne
w-play-brings-race-and-relationship-politics-to-the
Type: News, published
Description: Legendary playwright Ntozake Shange is honored at the Schomburg in
Harlem.
Afrobeauty.tv had a chance to speak with legendary playwright Ntozake Shange about a new
exhibition celebrating her classic work, ​for colored girls who have considered suicide/when
the rainbow is enuf​.
Forty years ago, the St. Louis, Missouri native Ntozake Shange created the first ever
“choreo-poem” entitled ‘for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is
enuf.’ Debuted in December 1974 in a bar outside of Berkeley, California, Shange performed
the play with four other artists. A unique hybrid of poetry in movement was created; “I worked
with dancers and took dance classes, and when I would do poetry I would ask dancers to
interpret my poetry,” says Shange.

2. For those who have seen this classic work performed on stage, many say it is life changing. One
woman who performed the work as a troubled high school student says it altered her direction
in life forever.
“I did the play when I was in high school. I was the Lady in Blue. I was having problems in school
and I lived and breathed that play, practiced it day and night. I knew I couldn’t be in the play if I
wasn’t in school, so it kept me from dropping out. That's the effect that Shange's work has had
on my life."
Read the full length article here:
http://www.blackstarnews.com/entertainment/others/ntozake-shange-speaks-to-afr
obeautytv-about-for-colored-girls-new-exhibition
Type: Feature, published
Description: This article focuses on the problem of sex trafficking in the United States
via a conversation with the director of the documentary, TRICKED.
Today I learned that sex trafficking slaves get penalized more than the people selling and buying
their “services...”
...And that really sucks.
Is it a reason to legalize prostitution? That might help, because in the United States where
prostitution is illegal mostly everywhere, everyone involved is treated like they committed a
crime, even if they were forced or coerced.
I found this out when I spoke to Jane Wells, the creator of the film TRICKED, which documents
elements of the sex trafficking industry in the United States. She’s been working on the film
since 2010. It has taken over three years of research and she worked with a number of NGOs to
learn about the issue. She and her team traveled all over the country looking for stories. They
interviewed everyone- from the women who were often coerced into selling their bodies to law
enforcement. “We were lucky to join [with] police forces,” She says of her and her co-director
John-Keith Wasson, who had been working on a TV show about pimps.
Read the full article here:
http://www.blackstarnews.com/us-politics/policy/who%E2%80%99s-to-blame-docu
mentary-film-tricked-explores-criminalization-of-sex

3. Type: Pop culture analysis, published
Description: This is a pop culture analysis piece, connecting modern day mainstream
media stereotypes of women of color to ancient indigenous African spirituality.
The Huffington Post ran a piece, a few weeks ago, on a recent Essence survey that
revealed that most of the magazine’s readers feel the portrayals of black women in the
media are not fair representations of who they really are.
HuffPost summarizes the study as follows:
Essence surveyed 1,200 women about the images of black women in media and found
that respondents felt the images were “overwhelmingly negative,” falling typically into
categories including: “Gold Diggers, Modern Jezebels, Baby Mamas, Uneducated Sisters,
Ratchet Women, Angry black Women, Mean black Girls, Unhealthy black Women, and black
Barbies.
Essence readers have a point. Only a handful of black women are playing roles in film
and TV that are more complex than these stereotypes, which have been mainstays of
how black women are portrayed in the media for the past hundred years: the mammy,
the black bitch (also known as the angry black woman or originally “the Sapphire,” a
term named for a character from the show Amos ‘n’ Andy), and the slut (historically
referred to as the “Jezebel”). But a look at contemporary “Goddess consciousness”
culture — a blend of many different indigenous cultures and New Age philosophy –
reveals that these archetypes actually resemble gross misinterpretations of some
Goddesses (or “Orishas”) of Yoruba tradition: Yemaya, Oya, and Oshun.
Read the full article here:
Are Black Female Casting Stereotypes Actually Gross Misinterpretations of Archetypal
African Goddesses?
Type: Review, published
Description: Review of burgeoning new media, the web series, produced by people of
color.
Everybody benefits from a little entertainment. The marginalization of the portrayal of people
of African descent has had an unlikely benefit: We started creating our own content!

4. “If there's a story that you want to see, but it hasn't been produced yet, then you must
produce it.”-Afrobeauty
We've taken the timeless quote from Toni Morrison regarding books and applied it to the
digital era. We hope you enjoy them all and share them with your friends. Of our 2-Part series
“Top Ten Best New International Web Series by People of Color,” here are the Last Five:
Everything I Did Wrong in My 20’s​takes a brutally honest look at what it feels to be “stuck” in
three major areas of your life - love life, finances and your passion. It’s very relatable storyline
consists of one 37 year old woman, Stephanie (played by Tiffany Snow) who’s having a early
“mid life crisis” type of well...crisis. This dramedy has it all: great writing, cinematography, a
very funny main character played by​Tiffany Snow, who in 2011 was awarded the NAACP Best
Supporting Actress Award for her role as the Lady in Green in FOR COLORED GIRLS by Ntozake
Shange.​As of now there are only 4 episodes. Support the great work of the second webseries
produced by Inkspot Entertainment.