So since my debut novel Destination Weddingwas released on Dec. 3, 2019, I have worked very hard to get out the word as far and as wide as possible. While having your work on sale at all is a thrill, I get a kick out of seeing physical copies of Destination Wedding in physical bookstores rather than just being on sale online. Here in metro Atlanta, Destination Wedding has been thankfully stocked at two independent bookstores Nubian Bookstore and Medu Bookstore. But as of now, Barnes & Noble Southlake now has my book on its shelves as well. See a few pictures above! And look at the company Destination Wedding is keeping! I love this phrase now: You are the company you keep.
So if you’re in metro Atlanta, please stop by Barnes & Noble Southlake and pick up a copy. Or if you prefer to support independent bookstores, please stop by Nubian Bookstore or Medu Bookstore. Now, Destination Wedding may on the shelves of other bookstores throughout the country, but these are the bookstores that I have personally visited.
If you don’t live in metro Atlanta and would like to support me, please request my book at your local Barnes & Noble (or online if there aren’t any) and or your favorite nearby independent bookstore. When these bookstores receive requests, they are more likely to stock requested books in the store rather than just have them on sale online.
And now Pastor Bryant has delivered a clap back to rival all clap backs. It was equal parts righteous, revealing and ratchet. But before we get into the specifics of the clap back, let me catch you up on the backstory. So apparently last Sunday, on the first episode of the reunion of The Real Housewives of Potomac, which I haven’t watched before but I will on tonight, Monique Samuels brought in a binder with tabs and everything to organize all of her receipts of misdeeds and mistruths regarding her castmates and used the binder to castigate them. (Aside: we have to thank Mitt Romney for bringing the “binder” to the culture. Remember his “binders full of women?” LOL) So Monique apparently had a tab dedicated to castmate Gizelle Bryant in which she accused Gizelle’s man, which is her former hubby Pastor Bryant, of cheating on her, referring to him as “Pastor Holy Whore.” That was the biggest allegation made, but there were other things she said, as Pastor Bryant addressed in his clap back.
Here’s a snippet of the reunion show.
So let’s get into this clap back, Saints. First let’s set the scene of this epic clap back. I imagine Pastor Bryant recorded this in his home as he is in front of a painted portrait of himself. Additionally, there are painted portraits of Nelson Mandela and Bob Marley. There are other striking painted portraits of black figures on the walls as well. Additionally, Pastor Bryant is donning a black hoodie with the words “I’m an African Angel.” written in white words. Shout out to Paula White and her silly self! SMH! So just from the setting alone, we see that Pastor Bryant is coming from a righteous place. He’s not cowering somewhere. He is coming correct…
So next, Pastor Bryant pulls out his binder! Now, that is ratchet but reasonable. If Monique can pull out a binder, why can’t the pastor? Then he goes into why it took a bit to respond, he says he was working in the campaign to help his Morehouse brother Ebenezer Baptist Church Pastor Dr. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossof get elected to the senate. That’s right, pastor. First things first. Elections before entertainment. Then he explains he was also working with my Soror Pinky Cole and her restaurant Slutty Vegan for a community food drive. And lastly but certainly not least of all, he was honoring “the wishes of Gizelle who asked me not to respond, not to say anything.” He goes on to say, “So to those of you who were overwhelmingly concerned that I hadn’t said anything and had not given any defense because I was honoring what it is that Gizelle desired. Because of mounting moments that have happened in social media, I thought it prudent that I not remain silent so that my silence will not be confused with consent.”
Then he explains that his response is not an apology nor is he asking for forgiveness for anything. It is the right thing to say straight out of the gate. If you’ve done nothing wrong, there is no need to apologize nor ask for forgiveness. This is simply his response. He also says for that five seasons that his ex-wife has been on The Real Housewives of Potomac, he has never mentioned the show in a sermon nor on his social media nor in any of the 50-odd interviews he does a year. In other words, why is Monique talkin’ about him when he has never talked about her? Additionally, he puts it out there that he has “not been an advocate for many reality television shows because I don’t think it represents the best of who we are, nor does it advance our progress, our maturity or our brilliance.” His statement juxtaposed with the backdrop is a powerful statement. Y’all pray for me though because I still love me some ratchet reality television shows 🙁
And he says that Gizelle’s participation in RHOP has been a “bone of contention” for years between the reunited couple. So with all of that background, the pastor, who is a human first, had to respond. He doesn’t even like reality television in the first place and then he becomes the hot topic on a reality show! Again, to reemphasize this point, he was right to respond! He also reveals that while they were in the “baby steps” of their reconciliation, he agreed to be on the show “against my better judgment, against my wisdom and even against my convictions. I wholeheartedly regret participating, and I want you to know that I will never be on The Housewives of Potomac or anything in that franchise ever again.” That is a revelation for anyone wondering if the pastor will use the show to expand his platform. Nope. Not happening. He says the show has been a “gross misrepresentation of my character, my ministry and my humanhood.”
Furthermore, he addresses allegations that he has been an absent father regarding his relationship with his daughters. Apparently, there was some photo shoot with his daughters that he was not able to participate in, which was addressed on the show. But Pastor Bryant explains that he was coming from South Africa to be a part of the photo shoot but got delayed in Germany. He says the producers and network knew this but these details were left on the proverbial cutting room floor I guess. And he also reveals that the reunion was recorded in 2019, and that his daughters were upset with him as well because for the first time in their lives, he was not present to take them nor pick them up from school. Also, there was an adjustment period for the whole family as he had recently moved to Atlanta. But he concludes that his teenager daughters are “absolutely daddy’s girls.” I’m not a parent, but when I reflect on my relationship with my parents as a teenager, there were times when they got on my nerves. All of this is relatable, wouldn’t you say?
Additionally, and centrally, he addressed Monique’s cheating allegations and calling him a “holy whore” I guess for a previous relationship he has had since his divorce from Gizelle. “I’ve been divorced for 11 years and single people date. When you date, sometimes it works, and sometimes it didn’t. In this instance, it didn’t. Nothing immoral, illegal or unethical took place. It did not work out. There is some clarity that needs to happen. I’m not married, I’m not engaged, so some of you have a strange relationship with language. You can’t have a mistress while you’re single. I’ve never had any mistress. She has never been to visit me in Atlanta, she has never been to New Birth, never been to my home, I’ve never been in her home.” He also revealed that he is still working out the kinks in his relationship with his former father-in-law, who is his Kappa Alpha Psi brother, as his marriage with Gizelle ended in part due to his previous infidelity. And he has owned up to his infidelity in his previous marriage.
CORRECTION: Apparently, Pastor Bryant was not referring to Monique. He was referring to the woman in New York he supposedly dated…And most revealingly about Monique, he revealed that while she is steady calling him out, she has been calling him, trying to get a come up! “If we’re gonna show text messages, let’s show all the text messages. Let’s show the text messages of the young lady asking to fly to Atlanta for my installation. Show the text message where I said ‘Nah, that’s not a good idea.’ If you’re gonna show the text messages show all of the text messages, where you asked to come down for Memorial Day. I said ‘No. You can’t come here.’ If you’re gonna show the text messages, show the text messages where you complained because I didn’t open a door for you to speak on the Word network. If you’re gonna show text messages, show all of them. How it is you wanted me to hire you to be on staff. I told you you weren’t qualified.” She even asked him to review her dissertation on the empowerment of black women (say whut?), which he says didn’t have “enough depth, enough nuance and there is no creativity.” As a writer, that statement hurt the most! When you can’t say, “Amen,” say “Ouch,” Saints!
And then the clincher of the clap back is Pastor’s Bryant’s critique of Monique’s husband Chris Samuels, who he says has CTE!
“You live in a house with a man who has anger issues, who doesn’t mind expressing volatile behavior. Everything that I’m saying tonight is not conjecture. This is not murder, this is self-defense. On Sunday, for the first time in five years, I’m inviting my audience to watch the reunion of the ‘Housewives of Potomac’, you’ll see Monique’s husband try to attack my ex-wife. Security had to be called, he had to secured. I’m very concerned.”
See the clap back for yourself below!
Call his clap back righteous, revealing or ratchet, but don’t call me tonight because I’m watching RHOP for the first time on tonight at 9 p.m. on Bravo! LOL.
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Today marks a year that my debut novel Destination Wedding was released into the world! And God has been so good throughout this year in helping me to get the word out about my book to the world. Just this week, I discovered that the Detroit Public Library chose my debut novel as one of the best works of fiction for 2019-2020!!! It was mentioned in its 2020 AFRICAN AMERICAN BOOKLIST!!! I’m on the list with the likes of Ta-Nehisi Coates, Victoria Christopher Murray, ReShonda Tate Billingsley, Jacqueline Woodson & More!!! (Crazy, right?)
Below is the cover of the booklist, which has been published for 52 years, along with my book cover. According to the Detroit Public Library website, “this bibliography provides a selected list of books by and/or about African Americans. The works of fiction and nonfiction for adults, children and young adults were reviewed and recommended by librarians of the Detroit Public Library.” Click HERE if you want to see the entire list.
Along with celebrating my book release anniversary, I also wanted to help spread the word about another important book that validates why I wrote Destination Wedding in the first place. Destination Wedding is my response to a real ABC News Nightline piece “Single, Black, Female and — Plenty of Company” in which it was reported that 42 percent of black women have never been married, which is double the amount of white women who find themselves in that dire predicament.
Obviously, as my book is a novel, the women in my book are fictional; however, this statistic illustrates a very real dilemma. Dr. Dianne M. Stewart, an associate professor of religion and African American studies at Emory University here in Atlanta, writes about this dilemma in her sweeping treatise Black Women, Black Love America’s War on African American Marriage, which was recently released. Dr. Stewart actually interviewed me about my novel last year at my book launch at Auburn Avenue Research Library in downtown Atlanta. Through our discussion, we were able to identify how our works intersect. While I address personal solutions to this dilemma through the lives of my main characters in my novel, Dr. Stewart identifies systemic solutions for what she refers to as “our nation’s most unrecognized civil rights issue” in her nonfiction book.
Similarly, as the ABC News Nightline report was broadcast in December 2009, Dr. Stewart cites that in 2009, 71 percent of Black women in America were unmarried, according to the 2010 US Census. As the ABC News Nightline report was broadcast in 2009, that time period was explored in my novel, but Dr. Stewart starts at slavery. She writes that “endless studies examine racial slavery in America as a reverberating assault upon Black people’s historic and contemporary liberties in perhaps every arena of life but one: romantic love and marriage.” Further down, she writes, “yet from its very beginnings, the transatlantic trade in human cargo, which set the American institution of African bondage in motion, required the disruption of intimate relationships and marriages.”
In Chapter 1 “Jumping the Broom: Racial Slavery and America’s Roots of Forbidden Black Love,” Dr. Stewart writes about a 19-year-old slave Celia who was hanged to death after killing her owner, who repeatedly raped her. Her true love was her boyfriend George, but she was unable to “freely choose a Black man as her lover and life partner.” Additionally, she writes that “less than 1 percent of slaveholders in the South held more than 100 persons in bondage, and by 1860 enslaved persons in the South, on average, lived in groups of 10. For this reason, enslaved women such as Celia were fortunate if they found romantic partners residing on the same properties with them.”
In the next chapter “Slow Violence and White America’s Reign of Terror,” Dr. Stewart writes about how Black love continued to be under assault even after slavery ended. Although they had been married for 22 years, Atlanta, Georgia resident Carolyn Gilbert’s husband, 42-year-old Henry, was lynched in 1947. Through sharecropping, the couple had saved enough to buy a 111-acre farm. But reportedly, he was shot and killed for allowing a “young black troublemaker” to hide on their farm. Additionally, a police officer shot Henry claiming the “deacon and treasurer at his small Baptist church ‘drew a chair on me.'”
In the third chapter, “Love and Welfare: Johnnie Tillmon and the Struggle to Preserve Poor Black Families,” Dr. Stewart interweaves pop culture examples in addition to more poignant real life cases of how Black love has been disrupted throughout the decades. I loved the 1974 movie Claudine. Dr. Stewart wrote that the movie “depicted the structural obstacles welfare posed to Black love and marriage and the stark reality that for millions of Black women in America at the time, choosing marital fulfillment (as the main character Claudine eventually does) meant loosing welfare benefits.”
Due to my age, I’m most familiar with the examples presented in the next chapter “Black Love in Captivity: Mass Incarceration and the Depletion of the African American Marriage Market.” And the first sentence in this chapter is particularly arresting. Pun intended. “No other institution has perfected America’s project of forbidding black love better than the contemporary prison industrial complex.” Further down, she writes, “Black men are incarcerated at much higher rates than any other group in the United States, even when convicted for the same crimes.” Did you know that former President Obama was the “first sitting president to actually tour a federal prison in 2015?” Additionally, former President Obama, “actually commuted the sentences of more inmates than his twelve predecessors combined.”
Speaking of Obama, Dr. Stewart writes about the former First Lady Michelle Obama in the chapter “Will Black Women Ever Have it All? Michelle Obama, Kheris Rogers and African Americans’ Shifting Landscapes of Love.” Dr. Stewart cites an article “Dark and Lovely, Michelle” by Vanessa Williams. Williams wrote, “A lot of Black women fell for Barack Obama the moment they saw his wife.” Let me raise my hand because that is true for me as well. While Dr. Stewart provides example after example of how Black love has been under assault by exterior forces, in this chapter, she presents an interior force that has its beginnings in slavery. In slavery, lighter-skinned Black people were treated better than their brothers and sisters of darker hues. And unfortunately, due to colorism, light-skinned Black women have more of a chance of getting married than medium-skinned and dark-skinned Black women, according to Dr. Stewart. Within this chapter, Dr. Stewart presents many solutions that I won’t reveal here because you have to read the book. However, one solution that I will share from her book is addressing colorism in the Black community.
Recently, actress Gabourey Sidibe shared that she got engaged to Brandon Frankel, who also works in entertainment. Sidibe, who is a dark-skinned black woman, has apparently received some criticism from Black men for being engaged to a White man. One YouTube blogger points out that in the past, many Black men have criticized Sidibe for her complexion and deemed her as undesirable and therefore have no standing to critique her coupling choice now. See the commentary HERE. Dr. Stewart writes that “Black women not only confront a shortage of Black men but also wrestle with internalized and interpersonal color consciousness.”
You have to read the book to experience the full breadth of Dr. Stewart’s exhaustive examination of this dilemma, but I hope I’ve provided enough information to make you buy your own copy of Black Women, Black Love America’s War on African American Marriage. It is a must-have resource if you care about Black love. I think employing personal solutions while addressing systemic solutions is the most comprehensive way to win the war on African American marriage.
What say you?
For more information about Dr. Stewart, see her website: DianneMStewart.com.
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