Rebecca Bodenheimer

Earlier this year, Cuban psychologist Dachelys Valdés Moreno and her American-born wife, Hope, welcomed their baby boy into the world. Although they live in Havana, they opted to give birth—as well as, nine months earlier, undergo the process of IVF—in the U.S. They couldn’t do it at home: The Cuban government still doesn’t recognize same-sex marriage.

The film brings up the complicated emotions many natives have about their beloved city
In the final act of the recently released independent film The Last Black Man in San Francisco, the protagonist, Jimmie (played by Jimmie Fails), is on a Muni bus when he overhears two women, clearly transplants to the city, dissing San Francisco.
“I’ve been saying for months, let’s just move to East LA. This city is dead,” one of the women says.

Twenty years ago, Pedro Almodóvar’s most acclaimed film, the Oscar-winning “All About My Mother,” was released. This film has always stood out to me within the Almodóvar canon as his first earnestly dramatic film, especially as pathos is not a sentiment often associated with Almodóvar’s work. Many people think of his campy comedies like “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” or his boundary-pushing melodramas like “The Law of Desire,” which feature explicit gay sex.

Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina (October 24, 1891-May 30, 1961) was a military general who seized power in the Dominican Republic and ruled the island from 1930 to 1961. Known as the "Little Caesar of the Caribbean," he is remembered as one of the most brutal dictators in Latin America's history.

Rubén Blades Bellido de Luna (born July 16, 1948) is a Panamanian singer/songwriter, actor, activist, and politician. He was a key figure in popularizing New York-based salsa music in the 1970s, with socially conscious lyrics that commented on poverty and violence in Latino communities and U.S. imperialism in Latin America. However, unlike most musicians, Blades has been able to toggle between multiple careers in his life, including serving as Minister of Tourism in Panama.

I’m a 43-year-old “small fat” woman who is also a dedicated yogi. I’ve been practicing yoga for 18 years, and it’s the only activity I’ve consistently kept up with on a weekly basis since 2000. In a recent yoga class, I found myself next to a tall, white cisgender man who couldn’t have been older than 25....

Oakland finally got its share of the spotlight in 2018. This city of around 420,000, perpetually in the shadows of its more famous neighbor across the Bay (San Francisco), was featured in three films that year: Black Panther, the third highest-grossing movie in U.S. history and directed by Oa...

Critical race theory (CRT) is a school of thought meant to emphasize the effects of race on one's social standing. It arose as a challenge to the idea that in the two decades since the Civil Rights Movement and associated legislation, racial inequality had been solved and affirmative action was no longer necessary. CRT continues to be an influential body of legal and academic literature that has made its way into more public, non-academic writing.

Reggaeton has been the soundtrack of Cuban daily life for over a decade, spilling out of homes, cars, and bici-taxis all over the island. Cubaton, as it’s sometimes referred to, is the preferred genre of Cuban youth, displacing the Cuban dance genre called timba (a late 20th-century Cuban form of salsa), and redefining the latter as music for tembas, middle-aged people.

The term “mulatto” is one of the third rails of US racial politics — an anachronistic and offensive term that holds animalistic connotations for many Black people, although the etymology of the word is still contested. In the video “Evoking the Mulatto,” an interviewee says that the term seems antiquated, and that “it doesn’t really apply anymore, like, come on, we’ve moved on.” It’s clear that many view the term as a signifier of a more racist past.

The third season of “Better Things” is currently airing on FX — and, judging from the first few episodes, the show continues to be the best show about motherhood on television. As a mother of two, I’ve always loved the show’s willingness to highlight the hardest, most frustrating aspects of motherhood: a contrast to the usual overly optimistic TV representations of mothers.

(CNN)There's no doubt that women had a banner year at the Grammys. It's hard to say if this is an anomaly or the new normal, and it's too soon to herald a changing of the guard within the Recording Academy.

Many people I know are binging “You,” the Lifetime series that premiered on Netflix on Dec. 26 and will be taken over in Season 2 by the streaming giant. And why not? It’s a twisty, addictive thriller that has a lot to say about how we can’t seem to live our lives off of social media.

Of all the touted benefits of breastfeeding, the idea that I would effortlessly lose all of the baby weight was a major motivator for me. Unfortunately, in my case, it turned out to be false. I breastfed my eldest child for a year and a half, and lost most of my pregnancy weight within the first month, but then I started regaining it. My experience has been roughly the same with my second child, who’s still nursing at almost one year old.

(CNN)The 2019 Golden Globe Awards will be held Sunday night, and based on a Hollywood Reporter poll conducted last month, the favorite for Best Drama appears to be FX's "The Americans," which concluded its sixth and final season this year, while the favorite pick for Best Comedy appe...