Rage Relief Kit #6: Own Your Story, A 'Sinners' Plight, and a Toast to French Toast

Your host doesn't quite have writer's block, but I can feel the beginnings of it coming on. The ideas stop flowing as easily, the prose starts to grind to a halt, and journal entries get shorter and shorter.

But the only way to deal with a problem is to go through it! So I'm just going to write my way out of my writer's block.

In this week's Rage Relief Kit, I write a post for HuffPost, watch the film "Sinners," and contemplate whether AI is alive or dead. At the end is a fun and easy French toast recipe for you breakfast aficionados.

So let's get to it!

'Reputation,' Danielle's Version

Years ago, before I was your host, or The Black Snob, or The Root and HuffPost's editor-in-chief, I was a lowly staff writer in Bakersfield, Calif., working for the local newspaper. I was an entertainment reporter when a local blogger decided to write about my mental health struggles.

It happened during one of the lowest times in my life — I'd just finished a two-and-a-half week stay at UCLA Medical Center, where I was diagnosed as bipolar. And for some reason, the blogger wanted to take credit for my psychological break and wrote about it in the gossipy manner of an old Perez Hilton post.

I recently wrote about this incident for HuffPost Black Voices in conjunction with the National Alliance on Mental Illness in New York City Metro, where I'm a member of their Leadership Circle:

Suddenly, anyone Googling me could find out I was living with bipolar disorder. Still in my early years in an industry that already judged me by my race and gender, I was now in another box — one shaped by stigma, silence and misunderstanding. The shame was overwhelming.

Even though I’d lived with mental illness for years, I wasn’t ready to come out publicly. I wasn’t ready to talk about my nights filled with calls to the suicide prevention hotline as I abused anxiety medication and alcohol. I wasn’t ready to talk about the Christmas I spent alone in a psych ward in Los Angeles, talking to my family through a hallway payphone, the walls covered in cheap, plastic decorations.

The truth is: I was sick. But it was my illness to disclose. When I was outed, I was horrified and embarrassed. I remember interviewing for a new job in St. Louis, only to be confronted with the blog post by the employer. Even though they would go on to hire me, I was humiliated. Afraid of being seen as unstable or unreliable, I worried about the kind of stigma that has ended careers.

But I also knew I had two choices: I could let someone else’s version of my story define me, or I could reclaim it.

That post followed me for years, with potential employers asking me about it. A few likely passed on hiring me or even talking to me because of it. But I would eventually make lemonade out of these bitter lemons when I decided to take back my name and reputation by launching my old blog, The Black Snob, in 2007. That site eventually eclipsed that of the local blogger, and after that old, mean-spirited blog was acquired by my former job at The Bakersfield Californian, I got it taken down for good.

This is why it is paramount for us to take control of our narratives online. Never let someone else have the last word on you, who you are, or what you believe in. Allowing others to define us invites chaos, leading to loss of control.

I got my power back at 30 years old by starting a blog. That blog led to almost every job I've had since I created it, proving that any life loss can be turned into a lesson. I temporarily lost my reputation, but built an apparatus and a plan to get it back.

The rest is history.

A 'Sinners' Plight

I saw Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan's runaway success, 'Sinners', opening weekend and have marveled ever since at this ground-breaking film and the discourse about it online, particularly on Threads where the algorithm has sent me every theory, fan fiction, and half-baked idea anyone has ever had about the Jim Crow era genre film.

I had two observations about Sinners as a girl whose mother loved the blues ...

The best thing that could come out of Sinners (other than folks seeking to learn their history), is an appreciation for the Blues. My parents both lamented how when they went to Blues shows later in life there were fewer and fewer fellow Black people there, as we had culturally moved on to R&B and Hip Hop, but the Blues is in all of us. It is our history. This film truly gave the Blues its due

... and as a girl who spent her summers visiting her grandparents in Arkansas:

Sinners might hit different if you are from the South or have close ancestral ties to it (both my parents are Southerners, and I spent my summers in rural Arkansas). This is because it brings to life our joy and pain during that period in that specific region. If you ever spent your summers in the rural South, visiting relatives, or you grew up there, the film is going to resonate on a profound level

As I wrote on Threads, the South has the distinction of being a place where my family was abused and oppressed historically, but also the place where I felt the most free because my usually overprotective mother suddenly didn't care where I went or what I did if I was in Newport, Ark., with a gaggle of my cousins, running all over the neighborhood, having adventures.

It wasn't lost on me that the first half of the film was about the push-pull between our oppression and liberation we find in each other, highlighted through song and dance. In the post-credits scene, Sammy, who is then played by Blues artist Buddy Guy, recalls the day when "Sinners" takes place as the best day of his life ... until the vampires showed up.

As someone who once partied in a juke joint outside of Kosciusko, Ms., in the 1990s, (we'll be here all day if I explain this story, so let's just say ... it was a college road trip), the juke joint scene was not that far off from what I experienced. Except without vampires again. It was just happy people dancing enthusiastically, introducing me to Three 6 Mafia's 1997 hit "Tear Da Club Up," while some woman stripped down to her Hanes undies and threw it in a circle.

What a time to be alive.

Schrodinger's AI

One of the best pieces I read last month came from The Texas Observer and was written by novelist Skip Rhudy on artificial intelligence. Rhudy argues that he doesn't put much stock in AI for literature and other writing because ... it's "dead.":

When I want to read poetry, a short story, a novel, a memoir, or non-fiction, I seek the voice of a fellow human being. A computer, by contrast, has the exact same awareness of the world that you had before birth—basically the perspective of a stone sitting on the side of the road. That is, no awareness of the world at all.

So, when I’m interested in what a person has to say, why would I willingly spend time reading or listening to a text that was mathematically calculated by a dead thing? I would not. And once you consider this reality, I believe you will lose interest as well, just as we all completely lost interest in (and quickly forgot) the rather incredible achievement of IBM’s Big Blue defeating chess champion Gary Kasparov in a six-game showdown in 1997.

Read the opinion piece at the Texas Observer.

C'est La French Toast

One epic summer in my teen years, I gained, like, 15 lbs because my little sister and I made and ate French toast almost every morning.

It's still one of my favorite things to make for a quick, easy, and delicious breakfast, although I do not recommend eating it every day. (Unless you're trying to pack on the pounds.)

Here's my quick recipe for decadent French toast.

Ingredients:

• 1 loaf of sweet bread like brioche or challah
• 2 large eggs
• 1-½ cups of whole milk, more or less (depending on size of loaf)
• 2 tbsp of sugar
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• ½ tsp of vanilla extract
• 4 tbsp of salted butter for the pan

Optional:

• 1 or 2 tbsp of powdered sugar
• Fruit topping (usually berries, but could be apple compote or any sweet fruit)
• Maple syrup

Step 1

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees.

Step 2

Using a wide, shallow bowl, scramble eggs with sugar, cinnamon, and vanilla extract. Once well mixed, add the whole milk, stirring it into the egg mixture to create the batter for the bread.

Step 3

Heat a large, wide skillet over medium heat.

Step 4

As the skillet is warming up, use a bread knife to cut the loaf of challah or brioche into thick, 1-½ inch slices.

Step 5

Melt 2 tbsp of butter in the pan. As the butter melts, dredge a slice of bread in the batter, soaking up the liquid. Flip the slice over to make sure both sides are coated and soaked in the batter. Then, place the slice in the hot skillet with melted butter.

Repeat this with two or three more slices and place them in the pan. Try not to overcrowd. Let the bread cook for a few minutes, then flip it over to toast both sides.

Step 6

Once bread is fully toasted, place on wire rack over a baking sheet and put it in the oven to stay warm and to further cook the inside. 

Step 7

Repeat steps 5 and 6 with the remainder of the butter, bread, and batter. Discard any excess batter.

Step 8

Remove French toast from the oven and place on a plate for serving. Garnish with powdered sugar or top with fruit. Serve with warm maple syrup.