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This week in black women: a badass Barbie, Jesmyn Ward, and the video game of your dreams.

Creeps faced a reckoning. Thanksgiving is almost here. And black women had another week of turning everything they touch into gold.

This is the fourth edition of "This week in black women," a weekly column dedicated to signal-boosting the black women who make the world spin.

I've got cheers and shoutouts for a much-needed video game, the mother of black Hollywood, an Olympic fencer turned toy, a Republican (yes, really!), a two-time award-winning author, and so much more. Let's do this!


"Taking care of business": Sen. Jackie Winters and Rep. Karen Bass

  • Sen. Jackie Winters (R-Salem) was selected to serve as the minority leader for the Oregon Senate this week. At 80, she is the second-oldest serving Oregonian legislator. She's also the first black leader of a legislative caucus in the state — and one of the few black women to lead a legislative caucus in any state, period.
  • Rep. Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles) put Jeff Sessions' feet to the fire during his hearing before the house. It did not end well for him.

"Hail to the Queen": Jenifer Lewis

Many know her only by her current role as Grandma Ruby on "Black-ish," but Jenifer Lewis is a legendary actress, singer, and Broadway performer. This week, Lewis added "author" to her list of accomplishments with the release of her book, "The Mother of Black Hollywood." In addition to providing the inside scoop on her storied career, Lewis gets deeply personal, discussing her battles with sex addiction and undiagnosed bipolar disorder in her 20s.

Photo by Mike Windle/Getty Images.

"We've got your back": Angela Wint

Angela Wint was the last athlete to complete the New York City Marathon, coming in 50,624th place in the Nov. 5 event. But despite spending more than seven hours on the course, Wint finished with toughness, heart, and courage. Her body ached and her legs wanted to give in, but she pushed on and earned that coveted medal.

"I’m gonna take [the medal] and wear it, and appreciate every step I took to get to this place. Our journey isn’t for us — it’s for someone else who thinks we can’t do it," she told the New York Post.

"We won't forget": Ruby Bridges and Gwen Ifill

  • 57 years ago this week, 6-year-old Ruby Bridges became the first black child to attend an all-white elementary school in the South. Bridges bravely entered William Frantz Elementary School escorted by U.S. marshals. White parents refused to have their children in a class with her and all but one teacher refused to instruct her, so she was in a class by herself, taught by Barbara Henry. They sat side by side and went about the business of first grade. Ruby Bridges Hall is now 63 years old and remains a steadfast activist.

[rebelmouse-image 19533276 dam="1" original_size="750x390" caption="Right: Ruby Bridges at Franz Elementary. Photo by Department of Justice/Wikimedia Commons. Left: Ruby Bridges at the 2017 Glamour Women of the Year Awards. Photo by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Glamour." expand=1]Right: Ruby Bridges at Franz Elementary. Photo by Department of Justice/Wikimedia Commons. Left: Ruby Bridges at the 2017 Glamour Women of the Year Awards. Photo by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Glamour.

  • Intrepid journalist and author Gwen Ifill passed away last year. Simmons College, her alma mater, has announced that it will name its new arts and media program after her. The Gwen Ifill College of Media, Arts, and Humanities will launch next fall.

"Go off, sis": Jesmyn Ward and Tiffany Haddish

  • Ward won the National Book Award for Fiction for her book "Sing, Unburied, Sing." Her characters are black, southern, and poor, but clearly the National Book Foundation recognized what we already know: that none of that diminishes the reader's ability to connect with the story. This is Ward's second time winning the award — a first for a woman fiction writer.

Jesmyn Ward attends the 68th National Book Awards. Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images.

  • Funny lady Tiffany Haddish became the first black female stand-up comedian to host "Saturday Night Live" last week. Yes, the first. In 2017. Here's one of my favorite sketches from the night.

"Hail to the Chief": Tonya Boyd

Boyd is the first black woman to be named deputy chief of the New York City Fire Department. It's lit! 🔥 (Safely, of course.)

"Y'all play too much": Ibtihaj Muhammad and Momo Pixel

Photo by Craig Barritt/Getty Images for Glamour.

  • Momo Pixel created this unbelievably fun (and sadly accurate) 8-bit video game called "Hair Nah." In the game, players become a black woman who has to stop curious people from touching her hair as she travels around the world.  It's an addictive way to make the most of an all-too-common microaggression.

Final thought: Brittany Packnett

I'll be back in two weeks with more women to celebrate and support. If you know a black woman I should feature, send me some links!

A pitbull stares at the window, looking for the mailman.


Dogs are naturally driven by a sense of purpose and a need for belonging, which are all part of their instinctual pack behavior. When a dog has a job to do, it taps into its needs for structure, purpose, and the feeling of contributing to its pack, which in a domestic setting translates to its human family.

But let’s be honest: In a traditional domestic setting, dogs have fewer chores they can do as they would on a farm or as part of a rescue unit. A doggy mom in Vancouver Island, Canada had fun with her dog’s purposeful uselessness by sharing the 5 “chores” her pitbull-Lab mix does around the house.

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We've all seen it while cruising for spots in a busy parking lot: A person parks their whip in a disabled spot, then they walk out of their car and look totally fine. It's enough to make you want to vomit out of anger, especially because you've been driving around for what feels like a million years trying to find a parking spot.

You're obviously not going to confront them about it because that's all sorts of uncomfortable, so you think of a better, way less ballsy approach: leaving a passive aggressive note on their car's windshield.

Satisfied, you walk back to your car feeling proud of yourself for telling that liar off and even more satisfied as you walk the additional 100 steps to get to the store from your lame parking spot all the way at the back of the lot. But did you ever stop and wonder if you told off the wrong person?

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A student accidentally created a rechargeable battery that could last 400 years

"This thing has been cycling 10,000 cycles and it’s still going." ⚡️⚡️

There's an old saying that luck happens when preparation meets opportunity.

There's no better example of that than a 2016 discovery at the University of California, Irvine, by doctoral student Mya Le Thai. After playing around in the lab, she made a discovery that could lead to a rechargeable battery that could last up to 400 years. That means longer-lasting laptops and smartphones and fewer lithium ion batteries piling up in landfills.

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8 nontraditional empathy cards that are unlike any you've ever seen. They're perfect!

Because sincerity and real talk are important during times of medical crisis.

True compassion.

When someone you know gets seriously ill, it's not always easy to come up with the right words to say or to find the right card to give.

Emily McDowell — a former ad agency creative director and the woman behind the Los Angeles-based greeting card and textile company Emily McDowell Studio — knew all too well what it was like to be on the receiving end of uncomfortable sentiments.

At the age of 24, she was diagnosed with Stage 3 Hodgkin's lymphoma. She went into remission after nine months of chemo and has remained cancer-free since, but she received her fair share of misplaced, but well-meaning, wishes before that.

On her webpage introducing the awesome cards you're about to see, she shared,

"The most difficult part of my illness wasn't losing my hair, or being erroneously called 'sir' by Starbucks baristas, or sickness from chemo. It was the loneliness and isolation I felt when many of my close friends and family members disappeared because they didn't know what to say or said the absolute wrong thing without realizing it."

Her experience inspired Empathy Cards — not quite "get well soon" and not quite "sympathy," they were created so "the recipients of these cards [can] feel seen, understood, and loved."

Scroll down to read these sincere, from-the-heart, and incredibly realistic sentiments.

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"Body positivity is about saying that you are more than a body and your self-worth is not reliant on your beauty."



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After persevering through numerous medical conditions and surgeries in her own life, Elman realized a few years ago that body positivity wasn't just about size or weight. Things like scars, birthmarks, and anything else that makes us feel different of self-conscious have to be a part of the conversation, and she tries to make the movement accessible to everyone.

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Yet, here we are.

PPE masks were the last thing on Leah Holland of Georgetown, Kentucky's mind on March 4, 2020, when she got a tattoo inspired by the words of a close friend.

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