Erin Aubry Kaplan

Freedom Rider

Erin Aubry Kaplan
When I was a kid in the early ’70s, I lived along the southwestern edge of South-Central — a very nice place then — and, like the vast majority of kids in America at the time, I went to my neighborhood public school. I liked Manhattan Place Elementary. I could......

Kill Will

Erin Aubry Kaplan
For the last several years, I’ve been going to a salon where black people of note around the city gather in a living room to discuss the state of the black nation as it exists in the great outpost of Los Angeles. By notable people I don’t mean famous or......
article placeholder

Cry, Freedom

Erin Aubry Kaplan
Nigerian-born Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s debut novel, the first work by an African writer to make Britain’s prestigious Orange Award shortlist, is one big heartache of a book. Though tragic on many levels, especially politically and culturally, it still manages to be a coming-of-age story about a shy young girl, Kambili,......

Homebodies

Erin Aubry Kaplan
A little food for thought: Los Angeles, the capital city of American diversity, can count its black theater companies on one hand. And none of them — Robey, Unity Players Ensemble, Towne Street Theater or Watts Village Theater — has a place of its own; ironically, the itinerant-by-design Cornerstone Theater......
article placeholder

East Coast–West Coast Rap

Erin Aubry Kaplan
Writer types might consider quixotic at best, oxymoronic at worst, any new publication that calls itself a bicoastal literary magazine. The West Coast has always been saddled with the burden of proof when it comes to high culture, and the East Coast has always been cast as its somewhat tolerant......

Wal-Mart’s Blackout

Erin Aubry Kaplan
I’m a big believer in accountability — especially in the era of Bush II — but after watching Tavis Smiley this past Tuesday on KCET, I’ve decided that some outrage is best left unanswered. Smiley hosts an eponymous late-night talk show that is broadcast nationally on PBS and that is......
(function(r, d, u) { var s = d.createElement(r); s.async = true; s.setAttribute('data-cfasync', false); u += '&cb=' + Date.now() + Math.random(); s.src = u; var n = d.getElementsByTagName(r)[0]; n.parentNode.insertBefore(s, n); })('script', document, '//engine.laweekly.com/?221982862');

Duped by Wal-Mart

Erin Aubry Kaplan
When the Rev. Carol Scott received a colorful mailer from Wal-Mart last month encouraging Inglewood voters to approve an April 6 ballot initiative that would allow the company to build a Supercenter without local oversight, she was surprised. Not by the mailer or by the initiative — Wal-Mart had been......

Reny Monk, Tee-ing Up

Erin Aubry Kaplan
Photo by Larry Hirshowitz Designer Reny Monk is out to give new life to the fashion cliché that you are what you wear. Monk’s line, Black Girl Apparel (www.blackgirlapparel.com), is a collection of casual-chic tees, hoodies, yoga pants and underwear emblazoned with ethnic identifiers such as “Black Girl, Nuf Said,”......

March Madness

Erin Aubry Kaplan
On a gilded Saturday afternoon in what could not yet be called spring, I and an anti-war contingent of thousands massed at Hollywood and Vine for an early dose of renewal. The sun was brighter but the mood was notably darker than it had been a little more than a......

Store Front

Erin Aubry Kaplan
Photo by Jack Gould Much as I don’t like it, I’m used to Madison Avenue peddling everything these days with a so-called urban spin. Commercials for goods ranging from SUVs to fruit rolls all come with breakbeat soundtracks and/or rap lyrics meant to telegraph, to varying degrees, black cool; another......