In Insecure, Issa Rae writes her own definition of Blackness. The half-hour comedy is inspired by Rae’s web series Awkward Black Girl. In Insecure, Rae plays a socially inept young woman (also named Issa) living with her seemingly lazy, unemployed boyfriend (Jay Ellis) in South Los Angeles. With one year until she hits 30 years old, and feeling empowered by her more successful best friend Molly (Yvonne Orji), Issa sets out to improve both her love life and job at a priggish non-profit called We Got Y’all. Despite being the first black woman to produce and star in her own HBO show, she’s not aiming to be the “representative for the black race.” The show is organic and easy to watch, and I guarantee you’ll get a good laugh. Watch it with your Stony Brook account on HBO Go.
Queen Sugar is a contemporary drama set in the fictional town of Saint Josephine, Louisiana. The series chronicles the lives and romantic journeys of the estranged Bordelon siblings: Nova (Rutina Wesley), a worldly-wise journalist and activist, Charley (Dawn-Lyen Gardner), the savvy wife and manager of a professional basketball star, and Ralph Angel (Kofi Siriboe), a formerly incarcerated young father in search of redemption. After a family tragedy, the Bordelons must navigate the triumphs and struggles of their complicated lives in order to run a struggling sugarcane farm in the Deep South. Directed by Ava DuVernay, Melissa Carter, and Oprah Winfrey, all episodes in the series’ debut season are directed by women. Watch Queen Sugar on Oprah Winfrey Network on Wednesdays at 10pm
Ava DuVernay’s stunning new documentary 13th, which you can view on Netflix, explores how the 13th amendment in the U.S. constitution which abolished slavery also came with a loophole that was exploited and eventually led to the current mass incarceration of black people in America. “The 13th Amendment has a clause that is a criminality clause,” DuVernay explained in an interview with The Huffington Post. “It says that everyone is free in this country. No one can be held as a slave… ‘except as for punishment for a crime.’” As it stands, America’s prison system accounts for 25 percent of the world’s inmates, 40 percent of whom are black, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The film explores how black people were once brutalized as slaves to the warped reality of the reconstruction era to the injustices of Jim Crow to present-day policing tactics that have aggressively targeted Black Americans and profited from their incarceration.
In the popular TV series Blackish, Andre ‘Dre’ Johnson (Anthony Anderson) has a great job, a beautiful wife, Rainbow (Tracee Ellis Ross), four kids and a colonial home in the suburbs. The family explores how success, for a black family, often comes with the challenges of assimilation. With a little help from his dad (Laurence Fishburne), Dre sets out to establish a sense of cultural identity for his family that honors their past while embracing the future. Watch Blackish on Wednesdays at 9:30 on ABC.
Being Mary Jane was originally to be called Single Black Female. The series centers on successful broadcast journalist Mary Jane Paul (played by Gabrielle Union) and her professional and private family life while searching for “Mr. Right.” Mary Jane Paul has it all. She’s a successful TV news anchor, entirely self-sufficient, and an all-around powerhouse who remains devoted to a family that doesn’t share her motivation. As Mary Jane juggles her life, her work and her commitment to her family, we find out how far she’s willing to go to find the puzzle pieces that she, and society, insist are missing from her life as a single Black female. The series is produced by Mara Brock Akil, who produced BET’s most successful series ever, The Game, and the romantic comedy film Jumping the Broom. Catch up this Fall and watch Season 3 on BET to prepare for Season 4 in January!