Tag: feminism

Women to Watch—A New World: 2024, KC’s newest art exhibit

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By Nicole Mitchell

Kansas City’s Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art is opening its newest art exhibit this month: the Women to Watch exhibition (Women to Watch—A New World: 2024). The series has been held every few years and invites women artists from across the country to respond to a theme picked by Washington, D.C.-based organization National Museum of Women Artists (NMWA) curators. Kemper participated most recently in the series in 2019 with Paper Routes—Women to Watch 2020. This exhibition will be the seventh total installment of the Women to Watch series.

The theme for this year’s exhibition was inspired by the events of 2020, including a global health pandemic, intense calls for social reform, and political division. Artists across the U.S. used this as inspiration to express visions of a new world.

This year, Kemper’s presentation of Women to Watch—A New World: 2024 features five local artists Mona Cliff/HanukGahNé (Spotted Cloud) (Aaniiih, born 1977), Bianca Fields (American, born 1995), Bev Gegen (American, born 1937), Melanie Johnson (American, born 1978), and Sun Young Park (South Korean, born 1990). The presentation was juried by Kemper Museum Director of Curatorial Affairs Erin Dziedzic and presented in cooperation with the Greater Kansas City Area Committee of the NMWA.

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Author Alice Faye Duncan Reflects on Activist Opal Lee, Meaning of Juneteenth

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By Sophie Oswald

In 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves in the South, but the decree wasn’t fully enacted until two years later on June 19, 1865, when news reached enslaved people in Texas that they were free. 

Since, June 19, or Juneteenth, has marked celebrations of the end of slavery, but it wasn’t until last year that Juneteenth became a federal holiday through a bill signed by President Joe Biden. One of the people in the room that day was Opal Lee, the focus of Alice Faye Duncan’s newest children’s book, Opal Lee and What It Means to Be Free. 

Opal Lee, also known as the “grandmother of Juneteenth,” played a key role in making Juneteenth a federally-recognized holiday.

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Steffanie Moyers is shaking up the serial killer thriller world through the eyes of a female protagonist

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By Sophie Oswald

Steffanie Moyers has always loved writing, but it took a while before she seriously pursued it as a career. Before becoming a freelance writer, she worked for a range of companies, like Netflix and NBC. Today she not only writes articles and blog posts, but she is hired to write and edit novels too. 

Steffanie has written, edited, and self-published four novels of her own and doesn’t plan on stopping anytime soon. We chatted about the past, present, and future of her writing career, with a special focus on her newest serial killer thriller that came out in April.

Tell me about WHAT HAPPENS IN…

The story follows our serial killer protagonist, Knox. Knox dances at the most exclusive strip club in all of Vegas, The Strip. Hidden on the 69th floor of The Cosmopolitan, the club can only be accessed with the right connections and a lot of money. It serves as the perfect place for her to hide in plain sight. The perfect place for her to occasionally rob or kill the scum patrons of the club…until she makes one too many mistakes and catches the attention of the LVMPD. While out in the casinos one night, she meets an attractive man and a whirlwind romance ensues. She doesn’t know he’s the FBI agent hunting her. He doesn’t know she’s the killer he’s looking for. Are red flags colored from blood, lust, or both? Will they have their answers before it’s too late?

As they say, WHAT HAPPENS IN…well, you know the rest.

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The new, sexy FDA-approved way of protecting against STIs

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By Nicole Mitchell

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved latex undies brand Lorals’ Lorals for Protection underwear as STI protection devices. Lorals for Protection protects its users from STIs during oral sex while being worn similarly to underwear.

The team of designers at Loral spent three years creating the latex undies for safe (and pleasurable) sex, and spent the last two years adapting the product to make sure that it met FDA and ISO standards, according to its website.

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The Cafe Cà Phê team is serving up hella good coffee, culture, and AAPI inclusion.

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By Kelcie McKenney

For Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, we teamed up with The Pitch to highlight the AAPI team members who make Kansas City’s first Vietnamese coffee shop Cafe Cà Phê possible. Stick around this month to hear their stories.

Cafe Cà Phê makes a damn good cup of coffee. But mixed in with the Vietnamese drip and sweetened condensed milk is the recipe for representation.

If you’re tapped into the Kansas City coffee scene, chances are you’ve heard Jackie Nguyen’s story. But we’ll give you a quick refresher. Nguyen, a first-generation Vietnamese American, left Broadway at the start of the pandemic, moved to Kansas City, and opened Cafe Cà Phê—Kansas City’s first Vietnamese mobile coffee shop. And since then, Nguyen and her coffee shop have positioned themselves as advocates for KC’s Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community.

“When I grew up, I felt so ashamed to be Asian. I thought it was so uncool, and I felt like we were always teased and looked down upon,” Nguyen said. “I do not ever want any Asian kid to feel that way because it’s so far from the truth. I hope to combat that.”

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