Catherine Gigante-Brown

I saw my present mother-in-law in a whole new light the first time she held my newborn son.

sex sage. fetish specialist. author.

TCM (traditional Chinese medicine) has been around for at least five centuries –– there’s got to be something to it.

My husband and I agreed: raising a child with an independent spirit who made decisions for himself was a good thing.

Were you going to run into that cute guy John Williams on the way home? Would you see Anne Marie by the lockers and sort out what to do for the weekend? It was hit-or-miss, and that was the beauty of it. The breath-holding chance of it all. Now, our kids’ friends are as close as a keyboard stroke away. It’s too easy.

In the photograph, my great-grandmother, Margarita Cirigliano, is sitting at a small table on the front porch of the family home in Borough Park, Brooklyn.

After I got over the initial devastation, I pulled myself up by my big-girl panties and got on with it. Chemo was no picnic—but it was do-able.

"I was afraid this thing was going to do me in. But I took a deep breath and decided very early on that I would face cancer on my own terms."

" Sure enough, the doorbell rang one early June day and there she was: curvy, seductive body, smooth black skin, bright blue eyes."

The heartbreaking saga of a 14-year-old Black prostitute who was murdered in cold blood by her (maybe) pimp on Christmas Eve in 1900 Savannah.