the bridge presents:
BLACK AND BROWN LOVE a series
artwork by: Ashley Gill, UNC
WHO WE ARE
Founded in 2016 by Chandler Philips, Eliza Moreno and Persis Bhadha at Duke University and University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, The Bridge is a multi-faceted organization which connects Black and Latina women at both universities in creating words, art, and poetry that demonstrate their point of view. By appreciating us, the world is joining us. And we are slowly changing it in the process. The Bridge seeks to build an online community for Black and Latina women through cross-cultural and cross-campus collaboration that celebrates their identities and allows them to reclaim agency over their narrative through creative expression. Our vision is to redefine the online sphere into a positive and uplifting space for Black and Latina women.
WHAT IS BLACK AND BROWN LOVE? Since the beginning of February, we have been celebrating the vibrant love that exists in the Black+Brown Communities. We have explored how our identity shapes our love for one another. How our love languages come together to produce the very connects that keep us going. Black+Brown people experience all types of love whether that be with out romantic partners, our brothers/sisters, our friend groups, and our selves. We invite you to explore the images and words that are an expression of the rich love we share.
AXEL AND ANA
“We met from the same scholarship program summer before freshman year. Rubenstein cohort touring East campus for the first time. We had a Spanish-speaking group because our parents didn’t speak English. But we didn’t start dating until much later!” -Ana
AXEL: “I appreciate the differences because sometimes I need them in terms of
how we are emotionally and in terms of how we approach the relationship. She pays more attention to the small little things, and I am not used to that, so I need that. The differences are good in this situation.
ANA: Echoing off of that, he’s more about the big things. I always say his love
language is about sacrifice, so he’ll always make sure to be there and sometimes he’ll give things up to take me somewhere, which is really nice.
AXEL: For me in hindsight, we work well together, and we’ve accomplished a
lot together. It’s sometimes draining, but in hindsight, I’d say the work we do together is my favorite.
ANA: I do this thing where I’ll scroll through Twitter. I have this Twitter ac-
count I’m obsessed with, and I’ll send him the things I find funny. A lot of social media we look at is very political and woke, so sometimes we just need something funny. At the end of the week, he will have like 200 tweets, and we will sit down and open them all.
AXEL: In regards to love, the biggest memory of someone being there and
taking care of me was when I was really, really, really young. With my mom, I was the only child for three years, so I grew up extremely close to her and very attached. As I grew up, I saw love as how much effort she put into us. So now, I see it like that: sacrifices and doing things for others, acts of service. If it’s a friendship or a relationship, I try to be as helpful and reliable as possible for that person.
ANA: Love means a lot, depending on who you’re talking about. I come from
a family that is just full of so much love. My parents have been married for 23 years and are very loving, so we have always been very affectionate. I express it every chance I get. That’s just how I grew up. My mom told me I love you like 100 times a day. My dad hugged me like 100 times a day, that’s just how I grew up.”
ARIANNA, AASHA, SYDNEY, ISA, BRYANT, AND ANA “I think that the love we also have for each other has made it more of a family too. We don’t love each other like friends, it’s more of a family bond.” -Isa
ANA: “I think we’re a supportive friend group and we’re good about supporting each other on our individual successes.
ISA: I feel like everyone is different in a very particular way, but we all complement each other.
BRYANT: In terms of friendships, love is unconditional, and you learn to appreciate someone for who they are. And you know the more time you spend with them it only grows stronger until it’s unbreakable. SYDNEY: If you don’t love your college friends, college is going to suck. ARIANNA: What is our dynamic? It’s pretty dynamic. It works.” AASHA: Love to me is all things good. So, if you want to have a good and happy life then you need to be open to love.”
BREON: “Zach and I met through a mutual friend. One day, I came to that
friend’s room and I saw him. My first reaction was ‘Oh, this is the boy that people say I look like.’ As soon as I got in the room, I got really acquainted with him. I thought he served as a threat to my existence, but our relationship has only grown to him being a best friend (I would even go as far as say brother) to me.
ZACH: For the first couple of weeks of school, I had no idea who Breon was.
However, people randomly kept calling me Breon and eventually, someone asked me if I had a twin. One day, I went to the Lou and he happened to be there, so I finally knew why people kept calling me Breon. We looked pretty similar.
BREON: [One day], Zach and I were sitting in the common room talking and
he was just ranting saying a lot of things. Then, he just randomly said, ‘Breon, you are literally one of my best friends on this campus and I wanted to say that I love you for that.’
ZACH: Usually, at night, I think about all the stuff that happened that
day and about all my friends. I just needed him to know that I appreciated him.
BREON: With Zach, I just love how corny he can be. Like our friends would say something, but he would always be that one person that would go too far with it and everyone would just laugh athow late he is or the corniness that he just displayed.
BREON AND ZACH
ZACH: I love how Breon is able to be straight up with me. He’ll tell me if I’m being rude or if my Fits are trash. I really need that type of person in my life.
BREON: I would say that our favorite memory together would be of the time that we
were traveling to DC for Thanksgiving break....While he was at the Raleigh-Durham Airport, he was embarrassed to be traveling with my friend and I because we were acting like complete fools in the terminal and the bridge to the airplane. Once we actually landed in the DC area, he had to turn his phone off because I said some out of pocket stuff while still on the plane (Lol).
ZACH: My favorite memory with Breon has to be traveling to D.C. with him. He was
heading home, and I was going to visit my grandma. The overall trip was hilarious because he acts a fool in public (lowkey might not travel with him again because he is is going to get me in trouble). It was pretty cool to travel with one of my friends too.”
MAYA
“Love is extremely important to me. My life goal is to understand love as best as I possibly could and then turn around and spread it in ways that feel most authentic to who I am.”
“Romantically, I’ve always thought of love as pain because I’ve been in a very abusive relationship and that made me associate love with pain and control. So for me, I don’t have good thoughts of love in that capacity. As far as familial and platonic love, I feel it deeply and can only view it in a positive light. I love my family and I love my friends. My family showed me deep love. They’ve seen me when it’s ugly, when it’s bad, and they still continue to advocate for me and fight for me even when I didn’t deserve it. I try to love with that same unconditional manner that they taught me. Self-love for me means making myself a priority, taking care of myself, like going to the gym in the morning, which sometimes means saying no to people when they want me to go to things so I can get up. I give myself space, if I don’t want to go out then I’m not gonna force myself. I’m gonna sit, I’m gonna eat bad food, and I’m gonna watch Netflix, that’s what I want to do. Self-love for me means giving myself freedom to do what I want to do when I want to do it and not always putting other people before me. My favorite thing about myself is my optimism. Even on my bad days, there’s still this glimmer of hope inside of me. I feel like things are always going to always work out some way somehow even if I can’t see it in the present. I just have this glowing optimism in me.”
CHELSEA AND ZAMARI “I feel like human beings need love, whether it be romantic or not. I couldn’t imagine my life without love, it’s an important emotion to feel.” -Chelsea
CHELSEA: “I’m so hyper and he’s so calm and sometimes I’ll overreact about
things and he’s just like ‘chill out, relax. It’s fine, you’re fine.
ZEE: I like her personality, she’s very outgoing. We balance each other out. CHELSEA: I think love is knowing that someone’s not perfect and dealing with
them anyway.
ZEE: I think love is being reliable to your partner. CHELSEA: I knew that I loved him when he would do things that I hate, and I
was like ‘oh, but you’re still cute.’
ZEE: What scares me about love is being so in love that you’re no longer productive and lose yourself in love. CHELSEA: What scares me about love is being disappointed. When you love
somebody, you almost see them in a different light and it’s difficult to see them in any other way. So if they disappoint those expectations that you hold them to, that’s pretty scary.”
FOR MORE PIECES AND STORIES ON BLACK AND BROWN LOVE, AND OTHER ELEMENTS OF THE EXPERIENCES OF BLACK AND LATINA WOMEN, GO TO WWW.THEBRIDGEIS.COM FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA! FACEBOOK: THE BRIDGE INSTAGRAM: @THEBRIDGENC TWITTER: @THE_BRIDGENC
A HUGE THANK YOU TO OUR CONTRIBUTORS AND TEAM! Axel Herrera Ramos and Ana Ramirez Arianna Rhue, Aasha Henderson, Sydney Morrow, Isa Jimenez, Bryant Lewis, and Ana Paz Breon Robinson and Zach Moore Maya Parker Chelsea Hamlet and Zamari Ellis
Debora Cordero-Martinez (2022) Tara Pal (2020) Ana Paz (2021) Sawyer Uzzell (2022) Liyu Woldemicheal (2022) Adrianna Williams (2021)Head of Editors (Duke)