Miss Manhattan Hangs Out...with Marquita Harris

Marquita Harris walks up to me as I’m sitting outside of The Chipped Cup in Harlem and all I can think is “YASGODDESSQUEENYASGLAMAZONOMG!” But I feel like that’s an inappropriate thing to say to someone I’ve met just once, so instead I just say, “You look beautiful!” And I definitely mean it. Her dark hair bounces in elegant curls and big, round black sunglasses rest on her face. Slim golden hoop earrings grace her ears. She wears a marigold ensemble that pops underneath a worn yet chic denim jacket with black open-toe heels and a matching black leather bag. She owns the sidewalk.

A writer and editor, Marquita--pronounced “[mar-kee-tah]” as she writes on Instagram--currently works as the Contributing Features Editor at Essence but has also worked at Refinery29 and Modern Luxury. She has a Master’s Degree in Fashion Journalism from the University of the Arts in London. Marquita was also the Editor in Chief and Co-Founder of Top Rank magazine, a Brooklyn-based publication celebrating the voices of women from diverse backgrounds. Inspired after a Beyoncé concert, Marquita and her co-founder came up with the idea for Top Rank. While they only made a one issue, it was star-studded from the start, with icon Janet Mock on their first cover. Their work on Top Rank also showed what Marquita could do as a writer and editor, something she could present to potential employers in the future.

Marquita has lived in Harlem for the better part of a decade and loves her neighborhood. We find a spot outside at The Chipped Cup and Marquita kindly gets us some iced coffees. She asks me how I like mine, but worried that my usual “half and half, two Splendas, light ice” is too demanding, I tell her not to worry about it. She cocks an eyebrow at me and smiles--she knows better--and I relent.

She takes a seat across from me and we talk writing and writing and magazines and magazines. Like me, Marquita is a magazine nerd, and she has a special place in her heart for independent publications. In particular, she waxes poetic about Trace, the magazine that taught her to love magazines. Everyone has one, she says with a knowing nod (mine was ElleGirl). She’s hoping to do more writing in the future and even has a book project in mind.

Marquita moves her hands expressively when she talks, fingers bejeweled with silver rings twinkling as she gestures. Jean-Michel Basquiat’s famous crown symbol is inked on her forearm. Tilting her head toward the sky when she’s thinking, the sun catches her brown eyes with a perfect light photographers spend ages in studios trying to master. I’m surprised to learn she doesn’t like to have her picture taken because she’s a natural in front of the camera.

For a quick bite we move from The Chipped Cup to Bono, an Italian spot nearby. We nibble salads, talking about boys and men. Sophisticated and independent, she rightfully has no time for the former.

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Miss Manhattan Hangs Out...with Tim Wyman-McCarthy

Tim Wyman-McCarthy never planned on liking big cities, let alone one like New York, but here he is, sitting in front of me at Bluestockings Bookstore, Cafe, and Activist Center on the Lower East Side. It’s one of his favorite bookstores in the city, and he wanted to visit because soon he’ll be heading back to the West Coast, where he is a Ph.D. candidate in Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley.

Tim has been in town for just one month, working as the Social Movement Intern for global humanitarian organization CARE. However, it’s not his first time in the city, by any means. Tim previously lived in New York while getting his master’s degree in Human Rights Studies at Columbia. It was, to say the least, a little different from attending university in his native Canada, but he quickly fell in love with the city and he’s glad to be back, even for a little while. And prior to New York, Tim also lived in England, where he got his other master’s degree in English Literature. He’s passionate about teaching and the opportunity to foster productive discussions allow for deeper understanding in the students he instructs at Berkeley, where he’s co-taught classes introductory composition classes with topics like "Language, Culture, and Indigeneity Before the Law"--his focus at Columbia was on indigenous justice and activism--and “Public Images: Photography as Political and Social Action.”

We sit in Bluestockings, chit-chatting over iced coffee and tea, surrounded by zines and books about queer studies, feminist theory, racial equality. Tim’s eyes sparkle when he discusses teaching, yes, but also theatre. While he can’t sing, dance, or act, he laughs, he’s still an aspiring Broadway baby and has made sure to avail himself of New York’s offerings before he returns to Berkeley. As we move through the bookstore, conversation follows the patterns of the stacks: querying necrocapitalism, interacting with autism rhetoric, celebrating American Chicanx cultural, feminist, and queer theorist Gloria Anzaldúa, observing radical communist witchcraft. Tim is especially delighted by a display of books asking visitors to “Hex the Patriarchy.”

Shortly our friend Andrew arrives (he introduced us). Andrew has slowly but surely been making his way through Tim’s list of fiction recommendations and today Tim adds another to the list, There There by Tommy Orange, which follows a cast of Native Americans living in Oakland, California. Tim has promised himself to read just one non-fiction book, one fiction book, and one book of poetry at one time. It’s his way of satisfying his desire to just read everything all the time.

Peckish, the three of us make our way Uncle Boon’s Sister, a newish Thai spot a few blocks away on Mott Street. Tim orders green curry and discusses the etymology of the word “sincerely.” Andrew and I make our way through our entrees, but I notice Tim hasn’t. He looks down and laughs. “Typical Tim,” he says with a smile. Sometimes he talks so much his food gets cold.

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Miss Manhattan Hangs Out...with Alex Marakov and Cassandra Chisholm

Wind whips through Cassandra Chisholm’s hair as we fly down Rouse Parkway in Columbia, Maryland. Her fiancé Alex Marakov is driving, a tassel from his 2015 Physics Ph.D. program graduation swinging from the rearview mirror. It’s sunny and hot and we’re headed to Baltimore, about 30 minutes away. They’ve made me a GoogleDoc that describes everything we’re doing today entitled “Elyssa ‘Bombshell Kissah’ Goodman Extravaganza 2018.”

I have had the pleasure of knowing Alex for almost 12 years, he a provider of great comedy and very tall hugs (he is 6’4”) since we met as freshmen in college. I have known Cassandra a fraction of the time--she and Alex have been together about three years--but she is an equal match in comedy provision, a giver of shorter yet by no means less powerful hugs. Together they are so vibrant and alive they sparkle, and it seems like their home is constantly full of laughter (not to mention delicious treats--Cassandra is a great cook). They call each other “Lady” and “Man.”

Arriving in Baltimore, our first stop is the American Visionary Art Museum. This was actually a request of mine because inside there resides a 10-foot-high statue of Divine. I really knew nothing else about the museum, and Cassandra and Alex had also not been before. Inside, it’s an explosion of vibrantly colored folk art, like a cross between New York’s American Folk Art Museum and Coney Island, everything quirky and old and covered in glitter or mirrors or beads. Their gift shop is also an adventure, and Cassandra and I comb through their wacky old jewelry and vintage advertisements and die-cuts and local artwork, occasionally bringing over trinkets to each other and giggling.

Our next stop is the Walters Art Museum, a free museum in Baltimore that houses tons of ancient works. In the museum cafe, we pause for iced coffee--it shocks them that I take two Splendas in mine and they joke that I am not invited back (I just like it to taste like coffee ice cream, okay?). But all is forgiven and we start to make our way through centuries of artwork. The museum’s newly renovated 1 West Mount Vernon Place is a former townhome turned into a gallery. We stare up at the stained glass skylight at the top of the spiral staircase in awe. Alex is particularly enamored of the ceramics exhibition they have, and loves one pot enough to walk past it on our way out as if to say goodbye.

Our last stop in Baltimore for the day is Hampden, a little punk neighborhood further north. We stop into Atomic Books, the place where famed “Pope of Trash” film director John Waters receives his fan mail. Many years of holiday cards from Waters line the wall, as do all manner of zines, fiction and non-fiction tomes, comic books, and graphic novels. Alex and Cassandra pick up a few of the latter but, devouring them, will need to come back the following day.

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Miss Manhattan Hangs Out...with Abeer Hoque

When I meet Abeer Hoque in the Bill Blass Public Catalog Room at the New York Public Library’s Main Branch in Midtown, she is a vision in magenta and cerulean, her dark hair dipped at the edges in bright blue. She has been working on her first screenplay and likes to tell herself she will work on it for just 15 minutes a day (it’s usually more).

I met Abeer through my reading series, having read her work many moons ago on a now-defunct website we both loved called Nerve.com. Since then, she has become the author and/or photographer of three books--2013’s The Long Way Home, a book of poems and travel photography; 2014’s The Lovers and the Leavers, a book of prose, poetry, and photography; and 2016’s memoir Olive Witch. She has also been a National Endowment of the Arts Literature Fellow, a Fulbright Scholar, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow, among many other accolades. Her work has appeared in Elle, Catapult, Bustle, and Slate, to name a few, and she has been profiled, excerpted, or reviewed in Vogue India, Good Housekeeping, Brooklyn Magazine, and more.

Abeer was born to Bangladeshi parents in Nigeria, where she lived for 13 years before moving to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She then lived in Philadelphia for college, San Francisco for grad school, Bangladesh and India doing her Fulbright, and then traveled the world for several years, visiting over 30 countries. She has lived in New York for five years now.

We take the 7 train from Bryant Park out to her home in Jackson Heights. As the train crosses above ground over the various parts of Queens, Abeer talks with an ease and openness, a comfort with herself. It seems like she is never scared to share, to talk about difficult topics that might have the rest of us (me included) shaking in our boots to offer to another human being. She walks on the earth with lightness as we leave the station, ankle bracelets and toe ring catching what minimal sun there is that day, her long skirt swishing in the breeze. The main drag by her home is dotted with multicultural restaurants, serving Thai and Peruvian and Uruguayan cuisine.

Her apartment, which she shares with her roommate, is dotted with drawings, plants, books and colorful paraphernalia from her travels. Abeer normally works at a standing desk, and has an anti-fatigue mat placed beneath it (a gift from a dear friend) so her feet don’t get tired. Light flows into her kitchen as she pours me a smoothie made from arugula (her favorite leafy green) and a host of fruits and juices before she prepares us a salad for lunch. She slices crisp veggies, toasts walnuts, and mixes together her own dressing before tossing it all in a big wooden bowl. We sit on her couch and crunch into carrots and radishes and more arugula and talk about writing. More light fills the room despite the cloudy day.

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