🎵 Girlfriends, there through thick and thin 🎵

Jolie A. Doggett

Published in

ZORA

Sent as a

Newsletter

4 min readSep 10, 2020

ZORA Fam,

In a year where we’re fervently searching for joy, Netflix’s Strong Black Lead is supplying us with a heavy dose of it with their lineup of classic Black sitcoms set to stream on the platform. Tomorrow, Girlfriends will be available on Netflix and we are hype. We’ll be reunited with Toni Childs, Joan Clayton, Maya Wilkes, and Lynn Searcy, four dynamic women traversing the complexity and fullness of Black sisterhood. The quartet gives us an on-screen bond that illustrates the beauty of how our chosen family shapes and holds us. As we prepare for our Girlfriends binge (and like many of y’all, re-assess all of Joan’s relationships), we’re also reflecting on some of our other favorite TV friendships.

Arabella and Terry (I May Destroy You)

Throughout triumph and trauma, the childhood friends have a deep connection of tenderness and forgiveness. “Your birth is my birth, your death is my death,” a line they repeat to each other throughout the show, is the ultimate friendship vow of loyalty.

Molly and Issa (Insecure)

Our favorite problematic duo. These two show us that friendship isn’t always laughter and good times. Sometimes lasting friendships require going through some emotional rough patches and coming out stronger on the other side.

Khadijah, Max, Synclaire and Regine (Living Single)

They are as opposite as north, south, east, and west, but it’s their differences that make this foursome the best of girlfriends, roommates, and family. They may roast each other to death but they’re also the ones to pick each other up.

Kim and Whitley (A Different World)

What started out as a mutual hatred blossomed into a beautiful, supportive friendship for these two. These roommates disagreed about everything but when the chips were down and life lessons needed to be learned, they always had each other’s backs.

Breanna and Spirit (One on One)

These two showed us what it meant to be a Black teenage girl in the new millenium. It was refreshing to watch Breanna and Spirit jovially navigate their formative years, leaning on one another through high school and home drama.

Honorable mentions: Moesha, Kim, and Niecy (Moesha), Pam and Gina (Martin), and Nikki and Andell (The Parkers)

Take care,

Christina M. Tapper, ZORA deputy editor
Jolie A. Doggett, ZORA platform editor

📚 ZORA Canon Book Club IG Live Chat 📚

Tomorrow at 11 am ET our senior editor Morgan Jerkins will be chatting with Evette Dionne of Bitch Media about the August book club pick Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments by Saidiya Hartman. Join the conversation on ZORA’s IG live.

Zero to 💯

Who kept it 100 this week? Let’s take a look.

“Golden Girls” with an all Black cast: 💯/ 💯
Regina King, Sanaa Lathan, Tracee Ellis Ross, and Alfre Woodward absolutely killed it in their performances of Dororthy, Blanche, Rose, and Sophia in a special reprise of The Golden Girls over Zoom.

Serena Williams advances to the U.S. Open Semi-Finals: 💯/ 💯
She’s eyeing the elusive 24th grand slam, which would tie Margaret Court’s singles title record. Keep fighting, Serena!

The P-Valley season finale: 90/ 💯
In the last episode of the southern gothic strip club drama, Black women continue to reclaim their power, though we’re confused by Miss Mississippi’s decision to save a villain who is not worth saving. Tensions run high as storylines collide to birth a new future for the Pynk, which makes us more than ready for a season two.

Live action Mulan premieres on Disney+: 50/ 💯
It’s great that this long anticipated film finally got a premiere and the acting and set design were something to behold. But fans had mixed feelings about the lack of songs and beloved side characters. Plus, a controversy surrounding the lead actress is still casting a dark cloud.

White women pretending to be Black: 🚮
Two culture vultures wrote articles on Medium confessing to pretending to Black women when they are, in fact, white women infiltrating Black spaces. The caucasity of it all.