Hi! Kedu ka i mere! I’m Joy, a 26-year-old Nigerian-American literati with a B.A. & M.A. in English Language and Literature. I’ve always had a passion for reading, writing, and research. As a Louisiana native, my interests encompass all facets of the Black/African experience. Feel free to look around and read what speaks to you, leave a comment, share a post with your mutuals, contact me even. Connect with me on my various socials below, too. I’m excited to be your new blogger bestie!
Welcome to The Braid Blog!
The Braid Blog is a literary billet doux to the Black experience, rooted in history, parted with care, and textured with memory. This is where the soft meets the sharp, where lineage speaks in sentences and every strand tells a story. Through art, essays, book reviews, and reflections on everything from politics to plaits, I’m weaving a space where we can feel, remember, and reimagine ourselves out loud. Whether you’re deep conditioning your boundaries, scrolling through joy, or just detangling the day—you belong here.
A space for the poems that live at the root. Return each month for a new verse.
December 2025 Feature:
A Pitch-Black Christmas Night
by Hebert Logerie
I am dreaming of a pitch-black Christmas night
Tonight, where the jolly stars can easily be seen
In the sky. From afar, the moon is clear and bright
And the clouds create a wonderfully divine scene.
I am dreaming of a dark black Noel night
Where all babies experience and see while asleep
The jamboree that I'm enjoying under the beam light
Of a flying sleigh. What I am saying is incredibly deep.
When the sky is pitch-black, there's always a party in Heaven
The angels wear an array of colors with their Sunday best
God sits atop, right in the middle of the feast in Eden.
I'm dreaming of a marriage between darkness and brightness
Where there is no evil, there is no Hell in man's consciousness
I‘m not sleeping but I'm dreaming like Baby Jesus in the nest.
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Step into Spike Lee’s Crooklyn through the eyes of a little Black girl carrying weight she never should’ve held. This reflection unbraids hyper-independence, misogynoir, and the quiet traumas we normalize in Black families—revealing how generational patterns shape our children long before we notice.
Ancestral grounds. Forbidden secrets. A family searching for home steps into a nightmare in Nyasha Hatendi’s Sacrilege. But what if the true curse isn’t folklore—it’s colonial erasure? Horror and history collide in this chilling tale of identity, belonging, and the price of miseducation.
Ryan Coogler’s Sinners is more than a film—it’s a meditation on faith, identity, and the dangers of false allyship. Through symbolism rooted in Blues, Christianity, and Hoodoo, the story compels us to question cultural erasure and survival. This analysis unpacks its motifs and impact on the Black community.
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A literary billet-doux to the African world.
