We’re one week into Black History Month 2019. And to celebrate, we turned to some of the most brilliants writers and thinkers of color we know to recommend some of their favorite books.
From collections of poems, to poignant YA page-turners, to bonafide classics, the books in this list are a testament to the varied, creative expressions of the black experience. The real question? Which one to pick up first. But don’t stress too much about where to start. Because while this month will be over in a few short weeks, these books will still be here to inspire, thrill, educate, and move readers no matter the season.
The CMT Artists of the Year special only honored male performers in 2017, which, unsurprisingly, caused some backlash online. It looks like the network heard people’s complaints, though, because this year’s honorees are exclusively women. Yes, for the first time since its inception eight years ago, the CMT Artists of the Year ceremony will tribute the current queens of country music—and only the queens.
Carrie Underwood, Miranda Lambert, Kelsea Ballerini, Maren Morris, Little Big Town’s Karen Fairchild and Kimberly Schlapman, and Lady Antebellum’s Hillary Scott are the seven women CMT will honor during the show—and each are more than deserving of the praise. Morris took the country and pop music world by storm this year with her crossover hit “The Middle,” featuring Zedd; Lambert spent the first half of the year killing it on tour; and Underwood publicly emerged stronger than ever with her song “Cry Pretty” after enduring a facial injury. (Her album of the same name drops this Friday, September 14.) Little Big Town also found success on tour this year, and Lady Antebellum is still riding the success of their 2017 album Heart Break. Ballerini, meanwhile, was just tapped to be a fifth coach on NBC’s hit competition series The Voice.
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“In this monumental year for women, dedicating one of the biggest nights in the genre to applaud female country artists not only solidifies our commitment, but we hope will spark a much-needed change in the industry,” CMT senior VP Leslie Fram said in a statement.
All the women receiving honors this year are returnees, except Morris, who released her first album in June 2016.
The CMT Artists of the Year Awards will air live from Nashville on October 17 at 8 P.M. ET. Mark your calendars accordingly.
A year after giving birth to her baby daughter, Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr., under some terrifying circumstances, Serena Williams is back and taking over the tennis court at the U.S. Open. On Thursday, September 6, she defeated Anastasija Sevastova to move on to the final on Saturday, and no one celebrated harder than her biggest fan, husband Alexis Ohanian. On Friday (September 7) the Reddit cofounder uploaded a touching video tribute to his iconic wife to celebrate her triumphant return.
“She fought for her life, for our child, for recognition, for equal pay, for women’s rights. She never gives up,” he wrote in the caption. “She’s passionate and unrelenting and the most inspiring person I know. I had this made for @serenawilliams last night after her match with some home videos from 1 year ago this week. Help me make sure she sees it! #iloveyouserena.”
The video begins with Williams giving an interview after her match on Thursday before cutting to footage of her in the hospital with her newborn daughter shortly after giving birth. “A year ago, you were not here,” the interviewer says in the voice-over. “What does it mean to return to the final stage a year later?”
“It’s honestly really incredible. A year ago, I was fighting for literally my life at the hospital after I had the baby,” Williams says, as the footage shows her doing exactly that. “So every day I step out on this court, I am so grateful that I have an opportunity to play this sport, you know?” she continues, sounding like she’s tearing up. “So no matter what happens at any match, semis, finals, it feels like I’ve already won.”
Um, I’m not crying—you’re crying.
In other adorable Williams-Ohanian family news, Alexis Olympia recently celebrated her mom’s U.S. Open return by wearing a tiny tutu that matched Williams’s instantly iconic looks on the court. “Did Momma win?” reads the caption on Williams’s Instagram. The cute is just too much to handle.
Though her name appears on the labels and stores of the brand she co-founded in the early ’90s, Kate Spade spent the last few years overseeing Frances Valentine, the accessories line she started in 2016. She worked on it until she passed away in early June, and her business partner Elyce Arons has said that Spade left four completed seasons, plus plenty of other concepts for the label, that have yet to be released. Plus, this fall, Frances Valentine is honoring its leader and her legacy by bringing back her first—and best-known—bag.
On September 6, Frances Valentine introduced the Kate bag, named after the late designer, and inspired by the iconic tote she launched Kate Spade New York with in 1993. It’s still nylon and boxy, and it comes in four colors: red, green, navy, and black. It’s available on Frances Valentine’s e-commerce site, as well as at Barneys New York, one of the first retailers to carry Spade’s designs, back in the early 1990s. The Kate bag retails for $195.
PHOTO: Courtesy of Frances Valentine
“Katy created the exact bag that she wanted to carry herself,” Arons, Frances Valentine’s managing partner, tells Glamour. “She loved simple, clean lines, square shapes, and functionality. The bag felt modern and essential when Katy first designed it—and it still does. It’s stylish, smart, and colorful, just like Katy.”
PHOTO: Courtesy of Frances Valentine
Arons adds: “We wanted to honor Katy and celebrate her creative spirit from the beginning… Frances Valentine is where Kate Valentine Spade’s designs and ideas live, and we wanted to recognize one of her iconic creations and show it alongside the new work of Kate Valentine Spade.”
When the style was introduced at Kate Spade New York, it was known as the Sam bag—and over the years, it became one of the most emblematic and easily-recognizable pieces of the brand’s collection. Spade and her husband and co-founder, Andy, left the company in 2007, but the Sam remained a core part of Kate Spade New York’s DNA. In honor of its 25th anniversary, for Spring 2018, under the creative direction of Deborah Lloyd, the brand re-released the Sam bag.
PHOTO: Victor VIRGILE
A model posing with Kate Spade New York’s new rendition of the Sam bag at the brand’s Spring 2018 New York Fashion Week presentation in September 2017.
Arons describes Spade’s design hallmarks as always being “clever, classic, architectural, and very essential. She had an irrepressibly joyous nature and that showed in everything she did.” The designer “was someone who manifested her personality in every product, so there’s a lot of Katy in everything we do [at Frances Valentine].”
PHOTO: Courtesy of Frances Valentine
Frances Valentine’s Kate bag has a give-back component, too: 20% of each sale will go to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. “Katy gave a lot of her time and resources to others, and focused mainly on children’s causes,” says Arons. “We thought a lot about which program to support, but in the end, Boys & Girls Clubs of America was an easy choice: Katy would like it, it’s a terrific organization that has lasting impact on the lives of young people, and it’s a national organization that touches so many.”
PHOTO: Courtesy of Frances Valentine
“She had a need to create, and made Frances Valentine her design home,” Arons continues. “We have an enormous conceptual library of Katy’s work that’s yet to be realized. We intend to keep her creativity and designs alive in Frances Valentine.”
If you or someone you know is going through a crisis, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741-741.
Mandy Moore is having one hell of a good year. She’s on a beloved TV show (This Is Us, of course). She’s got a fabulous new kitchen remodel. Oh, and she’s also been busy scaling the 19,341-foot tall behemoth known as Mount Kilimanjaro.
In early April, the singer and actress made her way to Tanzania, where she hiked Mount Kilimanjaro alongside her fiancé Taylor Goldsmith and friends. She Instagrammed the entire journey because did it really happen if you don’t have pics to prove it?
“There’s nothing more empowering than realizing that we are all capable of so much more than we give ourselves credit for,” Moore noted in a post.
Clearly, the journey left a mark. So, to celebrate the trek, Moore got a teeny, tiny tattoo on her foot in the shape of Mount Kilimanjaro.
“The mountain. Forever commemorated. Thank you @winter_stone for the reminder of what we accomplished,” Moore shared in an Instagram post alongside a photo of her new body art.
According to People, Moore wasn’t the only one to get the mountain-themed tattoo. Her friend and fellow climber Chase Weideman got the same design, only his was placed on his leg instead of his foot. “I lived on her. And we survived off of and on her, and I walked every step all the way to the top of her, with my best friends,” he wrote in his Instagram post.
Since her climb, Moore has posted a number of images remembering just how much she loves her adventure buddies and the mountain itself. “I miss the mountain already,” she wrote in a post one week ago. “I miss the daily rituals and customs that became forever ingrained in the fabric of what this experience was; the ‘water for washing’ every morning and evening, our instant coffee at breakfast, the constant peels of laughter at all of the inside jokes, finding the rhythm of packing and unpacking at every new camp site, the high fives and pleasantries and shorthand exchanged with our porters…. I also miss the simplicity of it all.”
She further explained that she’s been trying to apply the principles she learned on the trip into her regular life because this journey was about “so much more than simply checking off some item on life’s To-Do list.” Hopefully, now she’ll remember those lessons with every step she takes on that new tattoo.
If you’re hanging on to every detail that Sheldon and Amy make in advance of their wedding, then tonight’s episode of The Big Bang Theory was the most monumental since their engagement. Although it often feels like Shamy takes one step forward and two steps back, it seems—for now—that their choices for best man/maid of honor are set in stone. The winners? Penny and Leonard Hofstadter. The only problem? Amy made the wrong choice.
I get that this is a show—and Amy and Sheldon’s decision was interesting enough material for 22 minutes—but the future Mrs. Fowler-Cooper has two best friends in her life. So why did the episode have to become about choosing one over the other? Bernadette, who even campaigned for the honor, was left in the dust, presumably to play the role of bridesmaid. But easy choice—and the only choice, really—should have been to just have two maid of honors.
I’ve never planned a wedding, but “The Matrimonial Matric” particularly hit home for me. When my best friend got married, she—like Amy—had two best friends in her life. I was probably the closer friend—especially in her adult years—but she ended up choosing the other woman as maid of honor, basically because they had been friends since kindergarten. It didn’t matter that she and I had shared so much of our lives together—including living together—or that my parents treated her like another daughter. Instead, I was asked to be bridesmaid. It sucked. By declaring one of us a little more important than the other—even if my best friend didn’t see it that way—was a harsh reality that affected me more than I wanted to admit. And to top it off, the maid of honor used every opportunity to make it clear to me that she had a higher position. So you can see why I declared back then to never have a maid of honor in my own wedding one day.
PHOTO: Sonja Flemming/CBS
While I don’t usually subscribe to the “everyone gets a trophy!” sentiment, choosing only one maid of honor if there’s two or three equally deserving people is an outdated practice that rarely results in a good outcome. In this era of be kind, love one another, and support other women, it forces you to think about what those sentiments really mean. The Big Bang Theory had a great opportunity to bring all three women together on Amy’s big day. Instead, they turned it into a ridiculous competition. Bernadette should consider herself lucky that she doesn’t have to deal with the Fowler/Cooper antics.
There was one winning moment, though, and it came courtesy of Mayim Bialik’s hilarious reaction to Penny telling Amy that she’s her best friend, too. That bit of perfection almost made up for Amy’s choice. Almost.
