Blue Tile Skate

Oprah may be the epitome of black girl magic but even she can’t get enough of the amazing accomplishments from young black girls around the country. So she’s joining in on the celebration. 

This graduation season, the queen of media herself is going to commencement ceremonies for all of the young women who attended the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy in South Africa and are graduating from American colleges or universities this year.

Oprah ― who opened the academy in 2007 to provide young women in the country with an opportunity to learn, grow and graduate high school ― said she wants to support each of the nine academy alumni who will receive college degrees in the U.S. this year, marking a special moment not just for the girls but one for Oprah, too. 

“Seeing these students walk across the stage at graduation and accept their diploma – I am filled with a pride I didn’t know existed,” Oprah told HuffPost. “I would have to say it’s one the biggest rewards in my life – to see these girls become the women I always knew they would become.”

So far, Oprah has traveled across states to attend six graduation ceremonies, three of which she was chosen to be a guest commencement speaker, including: Agnes Scott College, Smith College, and Skidmore college. She also attended ceremonies at Johnson C. Smith University, Elon University, and Colorado College. 

This is the second year that 100 percent of the OWLAG graduates who have completed their studies and earned degrees in America have earned degrees. There are currently 16 young women who are attending colleges or universities in the states. To date, there is a total of 393 OWLAG graduates who have gone to colleges and universities around the world and 310 students who are currently in attendance. 

Over the years, Oprah says she has done her best to establish strong relationships with each of the girls. They call her “Mom Oprah” and she calls them her “daughter girls.” They also text and FaceTime her frequently and try to visit her during holidays, building a special bond with an inspirational woman who not only looks like them but who also provides them with opportunities to help them each live their best lives. 

“I opened my school for girls in South Africa because it has been shown throughout the world that when you impact a girl’s life through education, that opportunity is given back to her, her family and her community,” Oprah said.

“I have always tried to be there for my girls over the years, spending time with them, talking about their hopes, fears and aspirations, and sharing life lessons I’ve learned along the way,” she added. “I want them to know they have my support in all of the big and smallest of ways.” 

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Two Portland-based women were forced to shut down their burrito food cart over accusations of cultural appropriation and recipe stealing. 

Liz “LC” Connelly and Kali Wilgus’ Kooks Burritos business was featured in the Willamette Week on May 16. During the interview, Connelly described how the duo made their own tortillas after taking a trip to Puerto Nuevo, Mexico, in December and obtaining information on the process.

The method by which the two non-Hispanic white women obtained the information on tortilla making is questionable. 

“I picked the brains of every tortilla lady there in the worst broken Spanish ever, and they showed me a little of what they did,” Connelly told the Willamette Week. “They told us the basic ingredients, and we saw them moving and stretching the dough similar to how pizza makers do before rolling it out with rolling pins.”

But Connelly also noted that many of the Mexican women were hesitant to give away their methods ― a fact that didn’t stop them from trying to gather more information. 

“They wouldn’t tell us too much about technique, but we were peeking into the windows of every kitchen, totally fascinated by how easy they made it look,” Connelly said. “We learned quickly it isn’t quite that easy.”

Once back in Portland, Connelly said she went to the Mexican market to buy ingredients and recreated the tortillas to the best of her ability with trial and error. The two women opened up their food cart on Cesar E. Chavez Boulevard.

Mic.com’s Jamilah King responded to the Willamette Week interview with a piece Friday calling out the women for “stealing recipes from Mexico to start a Portland business.”

“The problem, of course, is that it’s unclear whether the Mexican women who handed over their recipes ever got anything in return,” King wrote in the piece that also outlined how others had begun to accuse the women of cultural appropriation. “And now those same recipes are being sold as a delicacy in Portland.”

That same day, the Willamette Week tweeted an update that Kooks Burritos had closed.

While the food cart’s online presence quickly disappeared, the business’s Yelp page is still active (with an “active cleanup alert” that monitors comments based on the spike in activity due to news reports). Both supporters and critics have sounded off on the page. 

“How would you people feel if I went and spied on your family or business recipes and took it somewhere else for my own financial benefit?” Olivia L. from Portland wrote in a Yelp review. “This is stealing.”

Supporters, however, have pointed to how common it is within the culinary world and food industry to take methods and ingredients from other countries and profit off of them. 

Writer Jagger Blaec weighed in on the controversy in The Portland Mercury on Monday, saying “Portland has an appropriation problem” and breaking down how the issue is a reflection of a bigger problem within the city.

“Several of the most successful businesses in this town have been birthed as a result of curious white people going to a foreign country, or an international venture, and poaching as many trade secrets, customs, recipes as possible, and then coming back to Portland to claim it as their own and score a tidy profit,” Blaec wrote. “Now don’t get me wrong: cultural customs are meant to be shared. However, that’s not what happens in this city.”

“Because of Portland’s underlying racism, the people who rightly own these traditions and cultures that exist are already treated poorly,” the writer continues. “These appropriating businesses are erasing and exploiting their already marginalized identities for the purpose of profit and praise.”

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Ava Morrison-Bell is an 11-year-old from the UK with a whole lot of moxie.

Morrison-Bell was asked to fill out a form for school with questions for students about their teachers. One asked how teachers can do better. 

The conscientious Bell suggested that they “not use collective punishment” as it is not fair for the people who “did nothing,” as per a tweet of the response by her father Mason Cross.

She goes even further to cite the “1949 Genva Conventions” as evidence that this behavior is “a war crime.” 

Undoubtedly, Bell means the Geneva Conventions, a series of international treaties established between 1864 and 1949. Most intriguingly, she’s referencing the 1949 Protocol II within the Conventions that “prohibited collective punishment.”

Granted, that protocol also prohibits torture, the taking of hostages, acts of terrorism, slavery, rape, enforced prostitution, etc., but the point is salient: Bell doesn’t want to be held responsible for things she didn’t do.

Cross told HuffPost that his daughter “said very positive things in the other answer” and that her teacher responded to her answer with “a dignified silence.” 

Additionally, Cross said that this wasn’t even the only time his daughter has mentioned the Geneva Conventions in casual conversation. 

“She also cites minimum wage legislation when we offer her £2 to tidy her room,” Cross told us.

Ava, you’re the best. We can only hope you’ll become a human rights lawyer one day.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

This mirror-illusion video has people doing a double-take.

Entitled “Walk in the Woods,” it’s the creation of Kevin Parry, a stop-motion animator at LAIKA. Be mesmerized as Parry travels through a mirror from one forest to another world, only to return moments later.

Watch the clip and see if you can figure out how he pulled it off:

How did he do it? Parry won’t give away all of his secrets, but he did offer a brief explanation to the photography website PetaPixel.

“The video is comprised of a single take, duplicated, and I had to make sure my start and end points were fairly lined up when shooting,” Parry said. “There is a bit of digital trickery in that I had to warp the ends of the clips to match, but there’s a hard cut in there (with only a few frames of dissolve). But I didn’t green screen or mask anything.”

The video has picked up more than 100,000 views since it was published on May 11.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

An award-winning British play that explores an unusual journey toward love and acceptance within the LGBTQ community just made its hotly-anticipated New York debut. 

Jon Brittain’s “Rotterdam,” which began performances at Manhattan’s 59E59 Theater May 17, follows Alice (played by Alice McCarthy), a closeted lesbian who plans to finally come out to her family after living with her partner in the Netherlands for seven years. At the same time, her partner (Anna Martine Freeman) tells Alice that he identifies as transgender.  

Though Brittain’s play grapples with themes of sexuality and identity, “Rotterdam” is ultimately a romantic comedy and, as such, concludes on an upbeat note for its central couple. The playwright, whose theatrical résumé also includes “A Super Happy Story (About Feeling Super Sad)” and “The Sexual Awakening of Peter Mayo,” told HuffPost that he began writing the play after several of his close friends came out to him as transgender. At the time, he said, he hadn’t seen many trans characters depicted in theater. 

“Over the years, I’ve tried to include LGBTQ characters in my work, even when they’re not the leads,” Brittain said. Over time, he became interested in “the idea of a character who have come to terms with their sexuality, who would then have to reconcile with their partner’s sense of identity,” and then find a way to reconcile the relationship. 

Brittain, who identifies as straight, said he was aware that his perspective on queer issues could be interpreted as “problematic” and, as such, went to extra lengths to “do the legwork” and be “respectful” as he wrote “Rotterdam.”

“There was a slight worry in my mind that it would seem cynical. I am aware that I carry a huge male privilege into this arena,” he said. “I know I’m writing about other people’s experiences… I like to think that I take that responsibility very seriously.”  

To that end, critics seem to be on board with Brittain’s work. “Rotterdam,” which premiered at London’s Theatre 503, has received almost universal acclaim since its 2015 debut. The Evening Standard called it a “lively, sensitive, hard-hitting piece about love, gender and sexuality,” while The Stage praised it for “managing to speak eloquently about a complex issue.” It went on to make history in April when it nabbed an Olivier Award (the British version of a Tony Award) for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre. That honor made it the first play to feature a transgender protagonist to win an Olivier. 

Ultimately, Brittain would be happy if “Rotterdam” encouraged conversations about LGBTQ relationships outside of the theater, too. 

“I think the play raises some questions more so than it comes down to specific answers,” he told HuffPost. “It would great if people came away thinking, ‘I need to educate myself and find out more,’ and that those who have already educated themselves see it as a positive contribution to that conversation.”

Jon Brittain’s “Rotterdam” runs at 59E59 Theater in New York through June 10. Head here for more details. 

Don’t miss the latest (and greatest) in LGBTQ entertainment! Subscribe to the Queer Voices newsletter.    

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

It seems it almost wasn’t a “Pirates” life for Keira Knightley.

Brenton Thwaites, who plays Henry Turner in “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales,” recently chatted with HuffPost about what it’s like to play the son of Orlando Bloom’s Will Turner and Keira Knightley’s Elizabeth Swann. He also shed some light on Knightley’s big return.

The actor told us, “It’s kind of an honor to play a Turner. I’ve watched all their stuff together since the first movie, and they’ve always had such a great banter and wonderful chemistry with each other.”

Fans were especially excited about the chance to see that chemistry again when it got out that Knightley would appear in the film. Images of the actress, which first showed up in the international trailer, instantly went viral. Since then, the cast has been pretty forthcoming about Knightley’s appearance, with Bloom openly talking about sharing the screen again with his “Pirates” co-star on the red carpet.

Still, her return apparently wasn’t always a lock. As Thwaites remembers it, the Knightley scene wasn’t in the original script.

“I believe it was added after. I’m not sure, but I believe it was added after,” Thwaites told HuffPost, saying the part with Elizabeth Swann was shot “14 or 15 months after principal photography.” 

“It was a long gap between finishing production and doing the reshoots with that little segment,” said Thwaites. “I had already shot my biggest scenes with Orlando, so we already had our moment, and our story had come to an end, and we kind of [closed] that chapter and had our climactic moment.”

(HuffPost reached out to screenwriter Terry Rossio about the moment and will update this story accordingly.)

Knightley previously said she wasn’t going to appear in another “Pirates” movie, which could explain why Elizabeth Swann supposedly wasn’t included in the initial script. But what changed her mind?

Perhaps she just missed life on the high seas. Or, as we speculated before, the actress probably stole a piece of cursed Aztec gold and got pulled into the role while trying to return it to the “Pirates” set. Who knows?

However it happened, we’re glad she’s back. Elizabeth Swann’s inclusion is without a doubt one of the best parts of the movie, and it may play a role in where the franchise goes from here. 

Thwaites told us he’d like to see his character have “a bit more material with Elizabeth Swann” in future “Pirates” films.

“I didn’t really have that much with Keira’s character, but I would like to see a bit more of that because it feels like the start of something new,” he said, “and there’s kind of a lot of possibility at the end of the movie. It feels like it will go somewhere.”

If we had a magical compass that pointed to what we wanted most, it’d be more Elizabeth Swann, too.

”Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales” hits theaters Friday.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Here is a story of unfettered beauty, one that complements every Mariah Carey anecdote you’ve ever heard or imagined. 

Picture it: Los Angeles, 2015. Production on “The House” ― a rowdy comedy starring Amy Poehler and Will Ferrell ― is underway. Mimi, long ago emancipated but not yet the subject of “Mariah’s World,” shows up during a day of reshoots to film a cameo.

According to co-star Rob Huebel, she is four hours late and has demanded her team fill her trailer with “all white roses” and stuffed lambs. (Carey often calls people “lambs,” and her fans have taken to using that moniker, as well.) She’s supposed to perform a song in her scene, but she doesn’t want to sing the one requested of her.

But wait. This is about to get good.

“So then they were going to do this bit where they shoot her, I think, and they kill her — in the movie; not in real life,” Huebel said during a recent appearance on SiriusXM’s Entertainment Weekly Radio. “But she didn’t want that. She was like, ‘I don’t think my character would get killed by bullets. What if I deflected them like Wonder Woman?’ They were like, ‘Mariah, we don’t have time. You’re getting paid so much money. We have you for one day. We don’t have time to argue with you. Just do it.’ She just didn’t want to do what they wanted her to do.”

Yep. Mariah Carey, the world’s preeminent demanding pop star, played herself in a movie but decided her “character” would be impervious to bullets, like a superhero. 

Of course, this story squares with the reputation Carey has earned over the years, as evidenced on “Mariah’s World” when her assistants panicked at their inability to set up an Apple TV for the singer to watch while she falls asleep. In 2012, Complex ranked Carey at No. 1 on its list of the craziest tour riders. Hers reportedly included 20 white kittens, 100 doves, a pink carpet and confetti shaped like butterflies.

Huebel said he’s not sure if Carey made the final cut of the movie, which opens June 30.

HuffPost reached out to Warner Bros., which is releasing “The House,” and to Carey’s reps, for comment. We didn’t immediately hear back.

type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related… + articlesList=589a4051e4b09bd304be8861,57aa0864e4b0ba7ed23d9b54,58ade9cbe4b01406012f3e29

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Merriam-Webster defines a “body slam” as “a wrestling throw in which the opponent’s body is lifted and brought down hard to the mat.” According to the online dictionary, searches for the term surged exponentially on Wednesday night ― but not because our nation had tuned into a particularly thrilling night of WWE. 

Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs was in Bozeman, Montana, covering a special election for the local congressional seat, which pitted the GOP’s Greg Gianforte against Democratic candidate Rob Quist. On Wednesday evening, he tweeted that Gianforte had “body slammed” him and broken his glasses as he attempted to interview the candidate at his campaign headquarters.

In a statement, Gianforte’s campaign claimed, improbably, that Jacobs “aggressively” got in the candidate’s face at an event, then “grabbed Greg’s wrist, and spun away from Greg, pushing them both to the ground.” A Fox News team was present, and published an account of the altercation that corroborated Jacobs. Gianforte has been charged with misdemeanor assault. 

But what exactly is a “body slam”? As Merriam-Webster defines it, the move might look something like this:

Here’s how Fox News reporters at the scene described the incident: “Gianforte grabbed Jacobs by the neck with both hands and slammed him into the ground behind him.”

Huh, sounds about right.

type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related… + articlesList=59261430e4b061d8f81f1253,5926702de4b062f96a33f251,5925e764e4b0265790f4ad60,592638a0e4b061d8f81f1dc5

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

This morning, Amazon ― the online bookseller-turned-everything store ― opened the doors to its latest brick-and-mortar outpost in New York City’s Columbus Circle. The company added in-person retail to its arsenal of buying options in 2015, when it opened a store in Seattle. Beginning today, it occupies a space where a Borders once was.

Unlike its competitors ― which mostly include independent bookstores, after the company’s rise lead to the fall of Borders and many Barnes & Noble locations ― Amazon’s physical bookstore relies on sales data to determine which titles will be prominently displayed. At the Columbus Circle location, a table labeled “Highly Rated: 4.8 Stars & Above” sits near the entrance. On it, are such titles as 100 Days of Real Food: Fast & Fabulous: The Easy and Delicious Way to Cut Out Processed Food by Lisa Leake and Cravings: Recipes for All the Food You Want to Eat by Chrissy Teigen.

For publishers, especially those who support the work of emerging authors, disempowered authors or authors whose voices aren’t in chorus with the mainstream, this data-based approach to bookselling is disconcerting.

Michael Reynolds, the editor-in-chief of Europa Editions, told HuffPost that Amazon’s ratings-based system isn’t conducive to discovering writers like the lyrical, wave-making Elena Ferrante, whom Europa publishes.

“Things like Tolstoy are going to have lower ratings than the new book by the new YouTube star.
Dennis Johnson, co-publisher of Melville House Books

“While a new bookstore, any new bookstore, is generally good news, I can’t see how Amazon applying its unsatisfactory recommendation engine to a physical space is going to result in the kind of discovery experience a reader has when she enters any good brick-and-mortar store,” Reynolds said. “It is certainly not going to help with bringing about the kind of bibliodiversity that, with authors like Elena Ferrante, Muriel Barbery, Boualem Sansal and Domenico Starnone, we seek to cultivate, and that I think is more important today than ever.”

Dennis Johnson, the co-publisher of Melville House, agreed. “Things like Tolstoy are going to have lower ratings than the new book by the new YouTube star,” he told HuffPost. “Real literature is slowly not going to be available there.”

Caroline Casey, the managing director of Coffee House Press, was more optimistic about readers’ appetite for well-told stories, and the tenacity of indie presses.

“I don’t expect [Amazon’s] experiments to damage independent bookstores, because what people value them for isn’t replicable in the Amazon model,” she told HuffPost. “So those booksellers, who are our very best advocates and sell our books better than I ever could hope to, should be fine. And so will we.”

Coffee House Press describes itself as “committed to diversity and inclusion,” and that mission statement is reflected in the titles it publishes, including Valeria Luiselli’s The Story of My Teeth, Saeed Jones’s Prelude to Bruise and Jade Sharma’s Problems. Casey says that while a “significant portion” of Coffee Houses’ sales come from Amazon, she doesn’t expect the seller’s physical locations to have either a positive or negative impact. Instead, she expects that indie bookstores will continue to account for most of the press’ in-person sales.

“A good bookstore offers not just curation, but also personality and the opportunity not [just] to find what you want, but to also find out what you want,” Casey said. “Amazon might have a lot of customer data, but it’s not the kind that yields a surprising, joyful bookstore visit.”

The decision to open brick-and-mortar stores isn’t the only recent change Amazon has made to its bookselling approach. Last month, the retailer tweaked its online buying options, so that publishers are no longer automatically granted the right to be listed as the default sellers for their titles. Instead, third-party retailers are now allowed to compete to become a book’s default seller. So, prime real estate on the site is often granted to those with the lowest costs.

Casey declined to comment on this new development. But, Johnson and Reynolds agreed that the move could hurt publishers and, consequently, authors, who aren’t owed a cut of the sale from third-party distributors.

I cannot be anything but concerned by Amazon’s insistence on chipping away at the perceived and actual value of books.
Michael Reynolds, Editor-in-Chief of Europa Editions

“The Amazon paradigm sees books as a function of a hyper-competitive market rather than cultural products that create a market, shape it, and at times disrupt it,” Reynolds said. “The most recent development concerning Amazon’s buy box will make it increasingly difficult for authors to be paid adequately for their work when it is sold through Amazon, and for publishers to invest in bringing new and diverse voices to the market and maintaining a robust backlist. As a publisher animated by an abiding belief in the broad and lasting value not only of books but of ‘bibliodiversity,’ I cannot be anything but concerned by Amazon’s insistence on chipping away at the perceived and actual value of books.”

“It’s another instance of Amazon killing the goose that lays the eggs,” Johnson said. “Screwing their partners in the ecosystem that naturally grows around any kind of product. What they’re doing now is something that nobody makes any money from, except Amazon.”

And it’s not just indie presses who could suffer from Amazon’s business decisions. In fact, Johnson said that Melville House ― which only relies on Amazon for around 25 percent of its sales ― will likely fare better than big-five publishers such as Random House, which leans on Amazon to sell classics and other backlist titles.

“This is treacherous for everybody in the business,” Johnson said. “Everybody’s threatened by this.”

“Amazon is nothing if not Trumpian in their behavior,” he continued. “The ruthlessness, the naked capitalism. It’s all there. They’re positively Trumpian. They have that in them.”

type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related… + articlesList=58753195e4b099cdb0ffe5ff,5644a686e4b045bf3dede618,56380dc4e4b079a43c0468ac,563cf3dfe4b0b24aee4a2bb5

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

George R. R. Martin is bringing winter early to President Donald Trump.

The acclaimed author has compared the commander-in-chief to one of the most brutal, sadistic and despicable characters from “Game of Thrones”— King Joffrey Baratheon:

“I think Joffrey is now the king in America,” Martin said in an interview with Esquire published Wednesday. “And he’s grown up just as petulant and irrational as he was when he was thirteen in the books.”

Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire book series is the basis of HBO’s fantasy epic. Shortly before the 2016 election, he said Trump was “unfit to lead this nation.”

Actor Kit Harington, who portrays the character Jon Snow in the show, also commented on the current occupant of the White House — and revealed why he refuses to call Trump by his official title.

“Mr. Donald Trump — I wouldn’t call him President, I’ll call him Mister,” he said. “I think this man at the head of your country is a con artist.” 

Read the full Esquire interview here.

type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related Coverage + articlesList=5700de59e4b0a06d5805ef9a,56cae793e4b0ec6725e3168f,590c4ca0e4b0104c734de2ce,5749539ce4b055bb117255fc

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.