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Today, I’ll be reviewing a new short film by , Solo Sali pa Nos Tur, which is currently having limited screenings in Curaçao. The film follows a young man who goes to celebrate his uncle’s birthday and, through their time together, learns more about how his uncle sees the world, what he has lived through, and what those experiences might mean for his own understanding of himself.

If you’re in Curaçao and you’re interested in experiencing contemporary Curaçaoan film and culture for yourself, mark your calendar for the film’s next community screening:

Friday, October 2 | 7–9 PM
Museo di Shon Cola (Museo di Tambú)

The evening brings together art and conversation around how our homeland is being sold and how we can resist as a community. The event will feature poetry by Vali Leonora, Nohely Simon, and Alexandra Martijn; a big-screen showing of Pharao’s music video "Ban Serio"; and the second public screening of Ralph Winedt’s Solo Sali Pa Nos Tur.

The collective Sin Kabes will also speak about the methods and motivations behind their recent protests, followed by a dialogue with the audience.

The evening is presented in collaboration with Museo Shon Cola and Kargando Narativa.

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Solo Sali Pa Nos Tur Preview Screening | Instituto Buena Bista

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At the end of August, I had the honor of participating in the Zürcher Theater Spektakel WATCH&TALK 2026 artist fellowship program. WATCH&TALK brings together artists from around the world to experience a substantial portion of the festival, meet with artists and curators, and engage in in-depth conversations about the work with no expectation of an output.

Notably, this opportunity came as a result of a Substack article I wrote when I first started this newsletter, which makes the experience particularly dear to my heart. I met incredible creative professionals and encountered performance art from around the world that expanded and challenged my thinking.

Now I’m back from Switzerland and live in the studio today! Join me as I reflect on the festival, the questions it left me with, and what I’m carrying back with me to Curaçao.

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Today, I have the honor of sharing an interview with an amazing artist and my dear friend, , discussing her newest book, Spida’s Daughter: Blood and Silence, a dark romance set in Jamaica and completely available for free on Substack.

Nicole Littlejohn is a Jamaican author living in Chile who writes dark, psychological romance, focusing on power, desire, and the complicated nature of human connection.

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Read the Book:

Nicole Little-john

Spida’s Daughter: Blood and Silence Part 1

Very special thanks to Kitty Killer, my literary and media consultant, who pulled me out of my funk and sat with me as I reevaluated the kind of pen I wanted to carry; to Goddess Siriana, erotic sociologist, professional dominatrix, kink and intimacy consultant, and cultural educator, who generously gave her time to present relevant, contemporary information on KINK so that even …

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6 months ago · 25 likes · 8 comments · Nicole Little-john

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Our discussion focused on caregiving. We had a rich conversation about the joys and challenges of caring for family, community, and ourselves.

I hope this conversation resonates with anyone who has ever found purpose—or struggled to find balance—in caring for others.

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You can purchase Dr. Drakeford’s books here: ChosenLeaders50 on Books.by

You can get connected and learn more here: Post | LinkedIn

Don’t forget to mark your calendars and join me on Killer Frequency every Friday at 1pm AST for your weekly dose of Black culture for the insatiably curious!

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Kushite was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and grew up under the magical influence of music and words on the island.

He is currently working on a poetry book and dub-poetry album, both called Thoughts, which he is looking to release late 2026.

Connect with his work via social media on TikTok.

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I have the honor of having Kushite, a contemporary Jamaican poet, on Killer Frequency as part of Activate Core’s International Virtual Book Tour. This will be a unique opportunity to get a sense of the emerging literary scene in Jamaica today!

Mark your calendars, tell a friend, and put me on in the background.

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Weekly Digest

News

This artist challenges what it means to be Black, Muslim and queer through playful drawings

The Stolen Dial: Golden Age of Black Radio’s Rise & Fall

William Catlett And David Fortune On The Power Of Black Fatherhood In ‘Color Book’

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This week, I’ll be discussing the new Netflix South African Telenovela The Polygamist, an adaptation of a novel by Zimbabwean author Sue Nyathi by the same name.

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Events

Miami, Florida

Ernie Barnes exhibition in Overtown explores sports, art and Black identity

Cincinnati, Ohio

Cincinnati Opera unveils final Black Opera Project production

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Gabonese artist Naïla Opiangah’s quest to redefine black representation | News24

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Music

Shatter the Standards

Album Review: THE GENTLEMEN’S CLUB by YG

Content note: this review discusses suicide and self-harm, child sexual abuse, transphobic violence, and graphic violence…

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3 months ago · 1 like · Shatter the Standards and Phil

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Happy birthday to Killer Frequency! We’ve been live for one year. Thank you so much for being here with me as I grow.

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No big plans today, just presence and whatever comes to mind.

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Black Arts Events

San Francisco Bay Area

ENGAGE! Art, Blackness & the Universe

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Today’s show is in Spanish, pre-recorded, and shorter than my usual. It’s a brief conversation with two educators, Berit and Mayde, who have been working in Minneapolis at the epicenter of the ICE raids. I’m honored to have the voices of those who have been resisting in real time on the ground on Killer Frequency. Put me on in the background.

Black Arts Events

Durham, NC

Black Trans Short Film Festival

This is my fourth response in my series on Decolonial Art History. I’ve been following a virtual course taught by scholars from around the world, and my goal has been to respond to each class with some form of reflection that I share on Killer Instinct. The intention is simple: to stay actively engaged, to immerse myself in the material rather than passively absorb it. I’ve been deeply enjoying the process. If you missed the first three responses, they’re linked below.

For this entry, I created a collage in homage to the Chinese artist Pan Yuliang. I encountered her work in a lecture titled Birth and Decay in Sites of Flux: Agentive Traces from Art of mid-20th Century in East and South-East Asia, taught by Professor Eileen Legaspi Ramirez of the University of the Philippines Diliman Department of Art Studies. What struck me most was Yuliang’s life story as told by her different names and how she complicates art historical research.

Professor Ramirez spoke candidly about the challenges of researching Yuliang. The artist appears under multiple names in the archival record. Research tends to assume stability: one name and one searchable identity.

Yuliang unsettles that expectation.

Professor Ramirez also discussed the tension between how Yuliang chose to represent herself and what emerges about her life through sustained research. How do we honor self-portrayal while acknowledging the fuller historical record? Yuliang insists on that question with unusual force.

Born Chen Xiuqing in Yangzhou, Jiangsu in 1895, she was later renamed Zhang Yuliang after being orphaned and sold into sex work by her uncle at fourteen. Her name changed again when she became a second wife and adopted her husband’s surname, becoming Pan Yuliang, a name she ultimately claimed as her own. These shifts were shaped by class, gender, vulnerability, and survival. Her multiple names reflect both structural constraint and personal agency.

Professor Ramirez noted that Yuliang herself never publicly spoke of her experience in sex work. That knowledge emerged later through research. This raises a delicate ethical question: how do scholars integrate biographical truths that an artist did not foreground?

Where is the line between contextualization and intrusion?

In my collage, I include Yuliang’s self-portraits as a way of centering her own acts of self-fashioning. Her legacy poses productive challenges to scholars today. What does it mean to sign oneself into history under a name that has been imposed, changed, and reclaimed?

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Previous Class Responses

Class 1

Class 2

Class 3

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Further Reading

From Brothel to Biennale. How Pan Yuliang Rewrote Her Destiny Through Art

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We’re digging through the crates together live today hunters! We’ll be listening to music that has released today for the first time together live on air. Discovering new music is so fulfilling, yet it can be a challenge to follow new drops and take the time to… dig. I’ll be browsing around, but Kehlani’s fresh eponymous album is an absolute must.

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Tomorrow, I’ll be live discussing the first Netflix series ever filmed in Martinique and the largest Martinican production to date: Bandi. Thank you , for your perspective about this show. We look forward to your review!

This series was just released on April 9th, so I hope to introduce you to your weekend plans.

A binge.

The cast is almost entirely Martinican, and it’s primarily in French and Creole. The playlist for this live comes directly from the show’s soundtrack. Spoiler free.

If you’re enjoying my content and learning new things from my platform, please tell a friend and spread the word! There’s nothing like word of mouth.

Join and enter the vibe of Bandi.

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Weekly Digest

On Youth, Aging, and the Discipline of Evolution.

I like to use pop culture as an entry point into broader reflections. So, in the spirit of honesty…

I recently binged Age of Attraction, a new Netflix series centered around age-gap relationships. The show is hosted by Nick Viall and his wife, who themselves are in a controversial age-gap relationship. If you follow reality TV, you may also recognize them from the broader orbit of shows like Love Is Blind, where their commentary and interviews have drawn significant discourse.

On principle, I don’t support the show or the Vialls, as it were. I find the premise questionable and inherently unsafe. Ditto for them as a couple.

And yet, I watched. Partly because I love reality television. Partly because there has been so much conversation around it. But also, because even in what we might consider “trashy television,” there are often opportunities for reflection.

And this show left me thinking about something I return to often: People’s capacity for change.

Can people change? Change of any sort — changing habits, tendencies, mindsets, patterns. Of course, they can and they do.

Sometimes. But it feels rare, and even when it happens, often shallow or too late.

It’s a question that many of us confront repeatedly in our relationships with parents, friends, coworkers, romantic partners, and even ourselves. We find ourselves hoping for change, waiting for change, or questioning whether change is even possible. And I felt like that question was humming in the background of this series.

One of the most surprising things I noticed was that many of the younger participants appeared more mature than their older counterparts. They were asking themselves thoughtful questions, reflecting on their decisions, and showing a willingness to reconsider their assumptions.

Youth can have its own genre of wisdom, and I think a lot of that wisdom is connected to a capacity for change.

Which led me to think about youth as connected to cognitive flexibility, something we may gradually lose over time. When we talk about aging gracefully, so much of that conversation is focused on our bodies and how we look.

That has its importance, as our health and physical well-being impact quality of life.

But I don’t think we give nearly enough attention to how our minds age.

How do we make sure our thinking ages well?
How do we make sure our emotional lives age well?
How do we make sure our psychology evolves?

What I noticed among many of the older contestants was rigid thinking patterns: deeply entrenched insecurities, coping mechanisms, and responses shaped by years of repeated behavior.

The metaphor that came to mind for me was this: Imagine a car driving in a figure eight, over and over again, on the exact same path for years. Eventually, that path becomes deeply carved into the ground. So much so that the car might even find itself unable to get out.

That’s what our habits and tendencies can become over time. Time gives us wisdom — yes. But time also gives us practice in our worst habits. And over time, those habits become etched into who we are and very difficult to escape.

So, how can we nurture our capacity for evolution?

So when we think about whether people can change, it’s easy to get lost in outward-directed thinking. But I’m finding it more helpful to bring it back inward. Because as they say, we only really have control over ourselves.

If that.

How can I nurture my own capacity for change?

Because while change is possible, it’s difficult at the least and often rare. Admittedly, I’ve found that giving up hope in others’ capacity for change has actually been helpful.

It’s helped me:

• set better boundaries

• exit relationships that don’t serve me

• conserve energy and reclaim time

• engage my chosen community with greater acceptance

It allows me to practice radical acceptance — loving people as they are, rather than waiting for them to become something else.

I’m trying to focus more intentionally on my own capacity for change and thinking of that as something I can actively nurture over time.

So, I want to think through a few characteristics that I believe nurture that capacity.

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1. Self-Awareness

First, self-awareness.

An ability to take a cold, hard look at ourselves without protecting our ego.

This means facing resistance, seeking discomfort, and questioning things we may not want to question. Honest, challenging reflection.

But equally important: self-awareness is not change.

I think we sometimes treat awareness as transformation.
“At least I know.”
“At least I admit it.”

And while that deserves credit, awareness without action is meaningless at best. At worst, it borders on ethically questionable.

Change requires:

• habit shifts

• discipline

• consistency

• reflection

2. Cognitive Flexibility

Cognitive flexibility or the ability to reconfigure our thinking, adapt, and shift perspectives.

I like to think of this as strength training for the mind.

We strengthen it through:

• learning new skills

• reading

• language learning

• strategy games

• travel

• exposure to new ideas

• facing fears

All of these are mental workouts. They are essential!

3. Curiosity

Curiosity keeps us flexible.
Curiosity prevents rigidity.
Curiosity invites growth.

4. Self-Compassion

Because this process is difficult.

We need to be able to hold ourselves with compassion.

5. Discipline & Strategy

Awareness is important.
But a game plan is better.

30-day challenges.
Seasonal reflection.
Intentional habits.

Even religious traditions like Ramadan or Lent — at their core — are about intentional evolution. Whether religious or not, we can adopt the spirit of those practices:
regularly reflecting on what we need to release and what we need to cultivate.

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Journal Prompts

To close, I want to offer a few gentle journal prompts:

• What’s a hard truth about yourself you’re ready to accept today?

• What’s a lie you’ve been telling yourself?

• What’s a small change you could implement right now?

• What’s something you could read or explore to support your growth?

• What activities have you been curious to try?

• What pattern in your life feels deeply etched — like that figure eight?

• Where might you be very aware yet slow to act?

• What would nurturing cognitive flexibility look like in your life right now?

And as always, I hope this offers something to reflect on.

This is Kitty.
Until next time hunters, y’all be safe out there.

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RIP Nancy Metayer Bowen

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This year felt like the universe picked me up, shook me, and placed me back down facing the opposite direction with a forceful push. Shaken.

I had a vision for what my future would look like, but 2025 didn’t seem to get the memo. It had other plans.

I graduated into an unprecedented job market with unique challenges for Black women. It felt like I was wrestling my degree out of my university’s cold hands just in time as campuses turned into tense political battlefields with Trump’s inauguration. There I was finishing my dissertation on marginalized communities in a keffiyeh looking for jobs in higher education.

Little did I know.

It’s been a humbling year.

When my plans started to crumble, I was left knocking frantically on multiple doors. Any door.

Starting my own business. Freelancing.

Building my own platforms.

Networking. Upskilling. Volunteering.

Applying.

I had no idea where I would land, and I spent much of the year convinced I might never. It was a season of a lot of rejection.

Rejection is evidence of trying, but it’s also a rigorous exercise in ego death. I spent much of the year feeling like I wasn’t good enough. Navigating commentary that suggested I wasn’t doing enough, doing the right things, or that I was actively doing all the wrong things. I was struggling.

But I kept on knocking. I changed my resume, adapted my interview strategies, and consulted mentors.

I started my job search not planning to leave California.

I ended up leaving the country.

I broadened my search in terms of field. Pay. Level.

And when I felt like all hope was lost, I resigned to entrepreneurship. That’s no disrespect to entrepreneurship. It’s now become a cornerstone of my professional life that I will never give up, but I never imagined it for myself. I had a lot of misconceptions about it. Mostly, I didn’t have the confidence.

What did I have to offer and who would really pay?

I thought confidence was a prerequisite. I’ve since come to see it as an entrepreneurial skill you can develop in the process.

Entrepreneurship didn’t stop the knocking, however. If anything, it amplified it. Entrepreneurship doesn’t mean you stop applying to jobs. Many entrepreneurs have full-time jobs. A lot of contracts are in traditional application portals and require a conventional hiring process.

I continued applying to jobs, fellowships, programs, anything that seemed slightly fitting and beneficial. Rejection had taught me that there was no reason to be picky at the application stage.

I was also knocking on doors that didn’t even present themselves as doors. Sending out resumes wherever I could find an email, cold calling, asking. Twice.

It was depressing.

The rude awakening that making a living, no matter which way you cut it, is hard.

It shouldn’t be this hard.

The end of the year brought glimmers of hope. An interview. A second round. A few fellowships that said they’d get back to me. Some subscribers here and there on my platforms. Modest but fulfilling. A couple of contracts secured. Invoices sent.

Entrepreneurship, the ability to secure resources by my own hustle, gave me more confidence than I knew possible. Sometimes the path you fear you’re not good enough for is exactly what shows you your worth.

As I close out the year, I’m hearing a few doors start to unlock and click open.

Just barely ajar.

Still, after many doors slamming the sounds are reassuring.

I had to shake you up to get you where you were trying to go because you were headed nowhere stubbornly fast.

Shaken, inside and out. Completely turned around, but ending the year confident if nothing else.

That the knocking has paid off.

That I’m now standing at the edge of abundance.

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Jay-Z is on tour, on stage, and in the press.

His legacy under intense scrutiny.

Family at the center of every trending topic.

So, let’s talk about it. Put me on in the background.

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Exclusive: The Jay-Z Interview | GQ

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Black Arts Events

The Interior Designer Creating Language to Describe Black Decor Styles - Dwell

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Black Arts News

How early Black Chicagoans used photography to redefine their image - WBEZ Chicago

For a black globality

Black Opera Singers Are Redefining an Art Form Under Question

Recognizing Black Women Quilters On National Quilt Day

It’s Saturday night, hunters.

I’m serving a Shelf Life review of Liv Zander’s Feathers So Vicious.

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As we approach spring, this is a great time to sit and reflect. In this live show, we will be using journaling prompts from the year of the horse for a gentle journaling session. I’ll be playing music you can enjoy as we slow down and think together! Shout out to for being my top resource when making the playlists for this weekly radio show.

Bring your pens, paper, and a friend.

There’s nothing like word of mouth, so if you’re enjoying the content, please spread the word.

And put me on in the background.

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I’ll be using this post by for our spring journaling prompts!

As of Late

Journal Prompts for the Year of the Horse

I’ve been thinking a lot about the Year of the Fire Horse, which comes around only once every sixty years. I don’t come from a culture that celebrates it, but somehow it feels perfectly aligned with …

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7 months ago · 56 likes · 2 comments · Martina

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Ear Candy Music

Honoring Women in Music

Ear Candy is here to serve your sonic sweet tooth…

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6 months ago · 2 likes · Kitty Killer and Alyssa M.

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Myth, Masks, and LEGO: Ekow Nimako's Elaborate Afrofuturistic Sculptures — Colossal

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