Media Diversified
Foregrounding marginalised voices
Jendella Benson is a photographer, writer and filmmaker based in London. She writes about issues of faith, race, identity, feminism and the arts for various publications online and offline, and is also an occasional public speaker and workshop facilitator. She tweets regularly from @JENDELLA and more of her work can be found at www.jendella.co.uk.
by Jendella Benson “I hate how women think that they are doing me a favour by having sex with me,” he began. “What about me? My intimacy is just as valuable!” Aside from the bitter edge in his tone, I understood what he meant. I wanted to laugh and tell him that this was one… Read More
by Jendella Benson Deciding that it is never too early to take the task of cultural reproduction seriously (see David Osa Amadasun’s article, “‘Black people don’t go to galleries’ – The reproduction of taste and cultural values”), I took my fourteen month old son to the National Portrait Gallery one brisk November afternoon. The exhibition… Read More
by Jendella Benson “Parenting is the single most important thing I do.” This statement is the third sentence in the biography of Berlin-based activist and award-winning writer Sharon Dodua Otoo and it leapt out at me. Somewhere deep down I feel similarly, but it would never occur to me to say this out loud, let… Read More
by Jendella Benson In the final days of 2016 I’ve found myself resorting to the simple pleasures of children’s television. If the neo-fascists of Europe really do want me out of here, all they need to do is buy me a ticket to a place where scandal is the mysterious disappearance of an ice lolly… Read More
by Jendella Benson In the immortal words of rapper Aubrey “Drake” Graham, “Man, what a time to be alive! You and yours, versus me and mine!” When the annals of history are compiled, what will 2016 be known as? The year of Brexit and Trump? The year Prince and Bowie passed on? Or perhaps we’ll… Read More
by Jendella Benson I didn’t realise I had postnatal depression until I wrote about it. And even then I didn’t accept it fully until other mothers read what I had written and told me, “I had postnatal depression too!” I’d been diagnosed with depression and anxiety before, and had spoken about it and my experience… Read More
by Jendella Benson When I was fourteen I was suspended from school for two days for calling a teacher racist. In my defence: she was racist. In her classroom there were two tables sat side-by-side, and each one sat eight students. One table had six Asian girls, one black girl (me) and one white girl,… Read More
by Jendella Benson Why did Brad and Angelina break up? Does anyone know or are we still grasping in the dark to make sense of this travesty? But why did we think they would never break up? Celebrities divorce all the time, so what makes this instance so disappointing? A sentiment I saw repeated and… Read More
by Jendella Benson I hate the term ‘baby brain’. It feels like an inside joke amongst mothers that uttered by any other person feels patronising. It suggests a certain type of ditzyness due to your brain turning to mush, like being around an infant all day every day somehow mentally incapacitates you. But ‘baby brain’… Read More
In January 2014 we asked 10 writers on their opinions for terms and classifications used to describe traditionally marginalised people in the West. These were collected in our article series ‘Ethnic Minority? No, Global Majority’, Parts One and Two. Since then the debate has raged on both sides of the pond. The term ‘political blackness’… Read More
Media Diversified 
You must be logged in to post a comment.