january recap: we out here inhabiting

I started a podcast, and a research project. The economy and Niki Minaj are trash, the books are fire, and the internet is unhinged.

i love to watch youtube on the big screen. i look iight up there.

My word of the year is inhabit. So we gotta talk about what’s been going on. A little soulwork news. A little personal news. A little of what’s been on my mind. Let’s get into it.

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I launched a podcast.

Taking it slow and steady because the internet is a real place, but I do not live there. Inhabiting my scholarship means making it accessible. Inhabiting my life means not getting bogged down in over-editing, overstimulating, or overthinking. I’ve been avoiding this project for 3 years. Let’s just build the thing, shall we?

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The labor market is still doing us dirty.

I been trying to figure out how to talk about the current labor market here. Because vocation is the whole reason soulwork exists, right?

Black women’s unemployment hit 7.5%. Between February and April 2025, we lost 300,000+ jobs. Mind you, this is after the “Great Resignation”, and the labor market decline of 2020. Men gained 621,000 in that same period. That’s a million-job swing, and we’re on the losing end.

It’s taking us longer to find work too—18.5 weeks unemployed on average, up from 11 weeks in 2024. Why? DEI is basically illegal now. There've been massive federal layoffs, and we're overrepresented in those positions. Small businesses are cutting back because of tariffs. Manufacturing is tanking. Pick your poison.¹

And working mothers? They’re dropping out of the workforce at rates we haven't seen in years because the Fortune 500 decided full-time office mandates were the move. And surprise—212,000 women left the workforce while 44,000 men joined it. Make it make sense.

One bright spot tho: NYC’s new mayor is trying to get universal childcare for every kid over 6 months. It’ll cost $6 billion, but Governor Hochul is backing it. We’ll see what happens.

I’m doing archive work about it, and I need your help.

I believe there is something deeply valuable in the choices we make to leave on our own terms, even when a system is trying to push us out by force.

So, I’ve started The Voluntary Exit Project. It is an independent research project to document why we go, how we go, and what happens when we choose ourselves.

I am looking for Black women and marginalized people who have left a job since 2020.

I want to learn from our choices. If you have a story about being pushed out, or a story about the moment you chose to walk away, I would be honored to hold it.

• It is anonymous. I don’t want your name or your boss’s name. I just want your truth.

• It is ours. This isn’t for a corporation. It’s for us.

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The books are lit. Pun intended.

January drops:

• Beatrice Dixon (Honey Pot founder) dropped a memoir

• Dorothy A. Brown’s Getting to Reparations

• Tayari Jones’s Kin (you know she don’t miss)

• Sadeqa Johnson’s Keeper of Lost Children (everybody’s gonna be talking about this one)

Coming this year:

• Chimamanda’s Dream Count (10 years in the making!)

• Kiley Reid’s Come and Get It

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  what boooks are you looking forward to reading this year? read anything awesome this month?

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One time for the culture:

Sinners is still the shit. Coogler, Jordan, Wunmi and Lindo deserve all 16 of those Oscar nominations. Doechii got 5 Grammy noms. Tems is dropping a new album. Coco Jones is touring.

Halle Bailey and Regé-Jean Page have a rom-com coming. I hope DDG is somewhere crying and throwing up. Kelly Rowland and Method Man are in Relationship Goals (drops Feb 4 on Prime). Bridgerton season 4 just dropped the first 4 episodes, and no spoilers, but, Lord Mondritch has a sex scene. Do w that info what you will.

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TikTok sold itself and immediately started acting brand new. The new terms of service collect your race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, immigration status, AND track your location even when you’re not using the app. People are deleting in droves. Altho, IDK why y’all still over there after the whole China thing.

Don Lemon was taken into federal custody by FBI agents in Los Angeles while covering the Grammys. The feds were responding to a Jan. 18 anti-ICE protest at a Minnesota church. A judge actually threw out the warrants last week, but the DOJ circled back with a grand jury indictment to make it stick. Attorney General Pam Bondi is pushing civil rights conspiracy charges, claiming Lemon helped “disrupt” a religious service, even though he says he was just there reporting. The night is dark, and full of terrors.

Speaking of Don Lemon, lets drag Nicki Minaj real quick. She spent a week in D.C. at the “Trump Accounts Summit,” holding hands with the President and calling herself his “#1 fan.” She’s flashing a $1 million “Trump Gold Card” that she claims she got “free of charge”. PDFs and their apologists got to stick together or get deported, I guess.

The racism is AI-generated now. Fake videos of Black women “yelling about EBT cards” are going viral. It’s exhausting. But. I told y’all this would happen. Someone on TikTok said “racist people are thinking about us 24/7, from sun up to sundown” and honestly? Facts.

Also, everyone’s nostalgic for 2016 now because apparently that’s how bad things have gotten.

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Bottom line

January was a lot. We’re out here inhabiting our lives anyway—launching podcasts, reading books, watching out for each other, and trying not to let the internet (or the economy, or the bots) run us off the road.

Love y’all. Mean it. (If you love me back, buy me a book!)

— B

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Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/black-women-unemployment-rate/