'Sinners' Celebrates the Decadent Intimacy of the Black South

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There is a decadent intimacy to the Black South. When I arrived in Greensboro, North Carolina, less than an hour away from where my first ancestors to the Americas toiled the land until they made it their own, those intimacies made themselves immediately known. There were no strangers; on the sacred land where I attended college and became the woman I was destined to be, we were enveloped in warm hugs, prayed over, pulled close to the bosom, and carried through both triumphs and storms. 

Those intimacies are in the shorthand dialect neighbors use with one another, in the sweet tea and the sour sorrows that seemingly move in tandem, in the courteousness that even shows itself during marches through the streets to protest injustice and demand freedom. There’s a familial connection among the Black folks who have—through destiny, fate, and pure ol’ luck—come to be on the same land at the same time. Those intimacies were even in the dark corners of the nightclubs we thrusted and grinded in, night after night, using our moving bodies to feel even a single semblance of freedom amid endless turmoil. 

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