jordannah elizabeth

In October of last year, India’s highest court ruled that sex with a child was always rape—closing a loophole in their age of consent laws that had allowed men having sex with child brides as young as 15 to evade punishment. In its ruling, the court declared that the clause was “discriminatory, capricious and arbitrary,” and “violates the bodily integrity of the girl child.”

In a piece for the New York Times, writer Daphne Perkins criticized the #MeToo moment’s takeover of the Golden Globes—and pushed back against conversations exposing sexual harassment. Unfortunately, she also forgot in her critiques of living survivors that their actions also speak for those who can’t.

In the wake of the sexual harassment and abuse accusations against Harvey Weinstein levied by nearly 60 women, many are asking why it took so long to bring to light the systemic sexual assault of women in the entertainment and music industry—an epidemic insiders saw as “an open secret.”

The seeds of the modern music industry were planted in the 1800s with the invention of the phonograph by Thomas Edison in 1877. Since then, white men have not only found ways to shape and dominate the music industry but also immediately began to create narratives of women's place in it.
In 1890, a journalist and music critic from Chicago named George P. Upton wrote a book titled Woman in Music, in which he insisted, “It does not seem that woman will ever originate music in its fullest and gra...

Interview with daughter of Alice and John Coltrane, Michelle Coltrane.

Interview/book review, "Mahogany L. Browne describes the making of The BreakBeat Poets Volume 2: Black Girl Magic."

My interview with Heather Ireland Robinson, the first black leader of the Jazz Institute of Chicago.

I covered Clemantine Wamariya's author event at Chicago's Humanities Festival.