Why I am here with you

Yolanda,

I too have memories of the kitchen table, but they are different from your big family memories. My family always felt small to me. Even though I have three older sisters and a big brother, we are a "blended" family and my siblings are all much older. By the time I was ten I was the only kid in the house with a single mom. We ate dinner on most nights at the kitchen table. My mom is fantastic, so those kitchen table dinners were intimate and loving, but also a little lonely.

I didn't learn to love the kitchen table until college. For three years I lived in the "Nia House" with twelve other black women. It was one of the best, craziest, and most formative experiences of my life. You can never be lonely in a house with twelve black women! I ate at that table; I played cards at that table; I studied at 2AM at that table; I took out my braids at that table; I cried about heartbreak at that table; I think I may have even danced on that table. So when you invited me to share The Kitchen Table with you here online I felt like I was getting an invitation to learn, grow, and have a great time in the process.

I have no doubt that I will learn a lot from you. We are both 30-something black women who are raising daughters while teaching, researching, and writing in the wilderness of Central New Jersey, and yet we are still very different from one another.

I hate how the media always trots out one sister to give "the black woman's perspective" as though we there is a single experience of being a black woman. Even sister Soledad on CNN this week labeled one segment "The Black Woman and Family." Really? There is only one black woman? We can challenge that assumption here by giving ourselves and our readers a chance to share a place at the table even if we don't always agree. I can't wait to explore our political ideas, religious commitments, personal struggles, and pop culture tastes together in this little corner of cyberspace.

Melissa