Kimberly Reyes

I became familiar with British filmmaker Steve McQueen’s work last year while writing a thesis on his 2008 film Hunger, based on the 1981 Irish hunger strike. Hunger is a devastating film no matter how much or how little Irish history you bring to it: the excruciating loss of life makes the viewing experience wrenchingly universal. As my thesis progressed, I trusted McQueen enough to watch his hugely successful and critically acclaimed 2013 film 12 Years a Slave. As a Black American, I’d prev...

George Floyd was the latest in a long line of Black Americans killed by white police officers in the United States. The horrifying video of his killing sparked worldwide protests in the middle of a pandemic with uneven mortality rates that are exposing existing inequalities. While many people around the world champion this new, impromptu, international coalition based around a racial justice reckoning, the overwhelming majority of posts I’ve seen in response to the Black Lives Matter protests...

My Brother Is ‘Essential’

I have one brother, Alex — a tall, broad black man who is a train operator for New York City’s M.T.A. The world is finally realizing that he’s “essential.” While Alex’s uniform may protect him from extrajudicial profiling, it also endangers him, requiring him to be exposed to the coronavirus. He’s always had to be tough, but since living with his girlfriend, he’s changed. Alex now tells my parents and me that he loves us. Out loud. I remember this change in...

She’s in Cork and her mom is in New York... but every day, KIMBERLY REYES goes online and they dance together
I WAS a teenager racing from my junior-high school to the pizzeria when I spotted a local celebrity.
D-Nice was signing autographs in Queens, New York, while handing out his record Call Me D-Nice. It was 1990 and he was super-cute with a ridiculously infectious smile, the kind of voice that puts you at ease while also making you stand a bit straighter, and a luscious, high-top fade.

Black American Expat in Ireland

I was a 16-year-old student at the Bronx High School of Science, scribbling Concrete Blonde lyrics at my desk...

Duran Duran are back!

A few weeks back, when New York City announced the minuscule number of black students admitted to its elite specialized high schools, the report generated the usual dialogues around how the system is broken and what, if anything, can be done to fix it. There is no doubt that the numbers are abysmal: Only 12 black students scored high enough on the citywide test to win a seat at my alma mater, Bronx Science, and just seven to Stuyvesant. While I’m concerned for the black students continually l...

While most of my friends chose to head-bang to Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Guns N’ Roses on the hour-long train ride to high school, my yellow Sports Walkman usually played something a little slower and more somber. From the Geto Boys to The Sisters of Mercy...

We saw this cute quiz in Buzzfeed and couldn't resist the urge to share. Teen-queen Taylor Swift has been compared to many other lovelorn writers, but this may be the first time acclaimed poet Pablo Neruda has entered the conversation. With lines like:
"Oh, losing him was blue like I'd never known. Missing him was dark grey all along."
attribution can certainly get tricky. Color imagery, mixed metaphors ... what?! Is it the Chilean wordsmith or the crafty chanteuse? Knowing Swift's affinity f...

Kimberly Reyes checks in on new Irish comedy-drama The Last Right, Aoife Crehan’s feature debut, which premiered at the Cork Film Festival.
There are many reasons why one should not strike up a conversation with a nosey stranger on a long-haul flight. One of them would be ending up with an unwanted corpse to unload. This is the premise of newcomer Aoife Crehan’s comedy drama The Last Right. The film, written and directed by Crehan, plays on the tragedies of each of its character to create a h...

I think best while moving, walking the manicured streets of my neighborhood—the Inner Richmond—as the fog settles, taking in the pastel-colored Queen Anne houses and neatly groomed gardens of protea flowers.
Last week, I ended up at an art studio near my house. I didn’t want to, but I found myself thinking about the time I went to a friend’s opening there this past summer, and the doorman, who’d been easily welcoming in non-Black people immediately before and after me, hesitated to let me in ...

In the latest article in our Rejecting Racism series, KIMBERLY REYES, a Black American poet living in Cork, and a student at UCC, recounts her own experiences of racism and says people need to start listening more and actively working to protect each ...
RACISM is uncomfortable to talk about, and before I witnessed the negative online reaction to the Black Lives Matter protests in Cork, I tried to pretend that my encounters here hadn’t in large part been defined by race.
I’m a Black American ...

Sun | West Sound A & E

Billy Idol lived hard, but he didn't die young, and that means there still are more records to make and shows to play. AP photo by Jim Cooper

NEW YORK — Few musicians can boast the level of success that Billy Idol attained in the '80s and early '90s. Unfortunately, the "live hard and die young" punk rock ethos doesn't come with a middle-age survival guide.

"When you're young you never think you'll be a 50-year-old rocking out with the young bands," Idol said.

That's exa...

Yet Do I Marvel: A Tribute to Countee Cullen [by Ki...