Emily Bernard

Emily Bernard is the author of Black Is the Body: Stories from My Grandmother’s Time, My Mother’s Time, and Mine, winner of the Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose, and Carl Van Vechten and the Harlem Renaissance: A Portrait in Black and White. She is a contributing editor of the Scholar.

My Name Is Emily 

What we call ourselves—and what others call us—can be both a burden and a gift

by Emily Bernard | Monday, March 04, 2024

It All Begins in Love

An essayist sees glimpses of her parents and the many struggles they endured in a new exhibition of southern photography

by Emily Bernard | Friday, January 05, 2024

Life in Black and White

by Emily Bernard | Monday, August 02, 2021

Interstates

How My Italian-American husband ate his way into the good graces of my African-American family

by Emily Bernard | Monday, March 06, 2017

The Value of Clarity

by Emily Bernard | Monday, August 15, 2016

Fired

Can a friendship really end for no good reason?

by Emily Bernard | Friday, December 01, 2006

Useful

by Emily Bernard | Monday, March 10, 2014

Scar Tissue

When I was stabbed 17 years ago in a New Haven coffee shop, the wounds did not only come from the knife

by Emily Bernard | Thursday, August 25, 2011

Deep Trouble

How a natural disaster barreled into a historical one

by Emily Bernard | Friday, June 03, 2011

Teaching the N-Word

A black professor, an all-white class, and the thing nobody will say

by Emily Bernard | Thursday, September 01, 2005