iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jennifer Caroccio Maldonado, PhD @drcaromaldo.blacksky.app · 15h

I really wish they would stop trying to make every plotline from Black Mirror a reality.

Still from the episode Black Museum from the show Black Mirror. A Black woman looks into a display with a white mannequin wearing a bunch of electrodes on its head.

Jennifer Caroccio Maldonado, PhD @drcaromaldo.blacksky.app · 02/10/2026

My talk with Christine Redfern and Caro Caron about their comic biography "Who Is Ana Mendieta?" was so amazing. I had the chance to talk about destierro (to be uprooted), Latin American art, and transnational feminism.

A woman with short curly brown hair wearing a plum shawl and black jumpsuit stabbing next to several comic pages hung up at a gallery.

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Jennifer Caroccio Maldonado, PhD @drcaromaldo.blacksky.app · 27/09/2026

Me and the Little are baking M&M almond butter cookies during the Nor'easter

Raw cookie batter topped with m and ms on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

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Jennifer Caroccio Maldonado, PhD @drcaromaldo.blacksky.app · 26/09/2026

We attended a friend's funeral yesterday and the church had a separate play area for the kids. It was nice to see a space that was welcoming to families with small children.

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Jennifer Caroccio Maldonado, PhD @drcaromaldo.blacksky.app · 27/08/2026

Not CUNY dropping this dope college appeal line. I need this shirt!

Two people wearing a cream color shirt that says the city university of new York in burgundy font.

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Jennifer Caroccio Maldonado, PhD @drcaromaldo.blacksky.app · 18/08/2026

This article is the epitome of "all skin folks ain't kin folks."

Screenshot of a skeet that says "NPR
@npr.org
What can academia learn from Jason Arday's rise and fall? Atlantic staff writer and former academic Tyler Austin Harper weighs the questions his story left behind."

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Jennifer Caroccio Maldonado, PhD @drcaromaldo.blacksky.app · 22/07/2026

Crocheted a second baby blanket this summer. So many 2026 babies! 🥰🧶

A crocheted baby blanket done with ropes of shell stitches in alternating pink and lavender stripes.

A folded crocheted baby blanket done with ropes of shell stitches in alternating pink and lavender stripes.

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Jennifer Caroccio Maldonado, PhD @drcaromaldo.blacksky.app · 17/07/2026

Thank you to whoever* on my SL recommended the book They Never Learn by Layne Fargo! It was deliciously good 😈 *Pardon me for forgetting who it was!

Image of the audiobook they never learn by Layne Fargo.

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Jennifer Caroccio Maldonado, PhD @drcaromaldo.blacksky.app · 14/07/2026

It's our ninth wedding anniversary so we exchanged gifts of ceramic and pottery. He gave me blue mugs from our favorite ceramic maker and I gave him a trinket box made from broken Chinese porcelain vases.

Two blue ceramic mugs stacked next to a small box made from Chinese porcelain vase.

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Jennifer Caroccio Maldonado, PhD @drcaromaldo.blacksky.app · 14/07/2026

In times like these (which are too often) I think of a Ruth Wilson Gilmore's "Where life is precious, life is precious."

So what we do is keep doing things, keep doing things, keep doing things. But what we have is the capacity to imagine things and to realize those imagination, that imagining. And that’s not idealistic. And it’s certainly not idealism, right? But it’s where people coming together in the context of this deep democracy, understanding radical interdependency, create for themselves the subjectivities that make life precious at every round of activity, whether they’re building socialism from the ground up, as the Abahlali people in South Africa are trying to do, or doing other things.

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Jennifer Caroccio Maldonado, PhD @drcaromaldo.blacksky.app · 13/07/2026

just visited mitch in the hospital and he’s looking full of life

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Jennifer Caroccio Maldonado, PhD @drcaromaldo.blacksky.app · 12/07/2026

Again, do your damn job NYT and find out if the same person who has been harassing Greenidge is the same one publicly criticizing her work! Maybe that are not the most reliable source.

Screenshot of text: She criticized the university's peer review panel, which she said included two senior historians whom she described as hostile toward Black women in academia. She did not name them. She said that the university's review was prompted by the complaints from a white woman scholar, whom she also declined to name. She said that she had sought a restraining order against that scholar.

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Jennifer Caroccio Maldonado, PhD @drcaromaldo.blacksky.app · 12/07/2026

Yeah, it happens to the best of us! You're dealing with hundreds of sources and thousands of citations. Where is the benefit of the doubt? That benefit is reserved for white male historians.

Screenshot of text Still, she acknowledged: "Are there citations that were misattributed? Probably."

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Jennifer Caroccio Maldonado, PhD @drcaromaldo.blacksky.app · 12/07/2026

Idk chase down any of these claims!!! I am sure there is evidence. But the NYT, rich others have pointed out, often are on their own racist/sexist crusades.

Screenshot of text: In an interview on Friday, Greenidge, who is Black, said that her life's work had been torn down by white scholars who disagreed with her conclusions about racism, slavery and white supremacy.

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Jennifer Caroccio Maldonado, PhD @drcaromaldo.blacksky.app · 12/07/2026

Glenn, who the NYT fails to mention is a white woman, claims some of the letters where not in a particular archive. Could they have been in another archive? There are plenty of reasons that are far less nefarious than Glenn or the NYT decides to attribute to Greenidge's work.

Screenshot of text In the review, Glenn noted that the book quoted letters exchanged between the Grimke sisters, Angelina and Sarah, "antebellum radicals who renounced their family heritage to campaign for abolitionism, racial equality, and women's rights," while the siblings discussed their biracial nephews.
But Glenn asserted in her review that the University of Michigan did not possess the letters in its archive, despite the book's claims that they were kept there.

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Jennifer Caroccio Maldonado, PhD @drcaromaldo.blacksky.app · 12/07/2026

I read this article yesterday and I have some points I'd like to address. The NYT peice does not engage meaningfully with the racism [and sexism] of the situation. No names, no investigation. But they do give plenty of space for her critics's unfounded claims. 🧵 1/x

Screenshot of text Several other scholars, who described themselves as skeptical of some of Greenidge's assertions in the book, started fact-checking her - scrutiny that Greenidge argued was racially motivated when asked for comment on Friday. Some of the criticism centered around whether Greenidge had properly credited sources.

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Jennifer Caroccio Maldonado, PhD @drcaromaldo.blacksky.app · 10/07/2026

This is giving yt people being racist and having BLM in their bios.

Screenshot of article that says He ended his notice with a strong statement aligned with the progressive platform. "F*ck ICE. Free Palestine. Up the Hearts."

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Jennifer Caroccio Maldonado, PhD @drcaromaldo.blacksky.app · 08/07/2026

Everyone time I read about how Mitch McConnell's aides can't confirm if he's conscious I think of

Movie still from weekend at Bernie's. A man sitting next a dead guy wearing sunglass.

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Jennifer Caroccio Maldonado, PhD @drcaromaldo.blacksky.app · 04/07/2026

My first Tunisian crocheted blanket! It's a baby gift for a dear friend. #crochet 🧶💜

A Tunisian crocheted blanket in alternating chunky stripes of purple and yellow with a light grey trim.

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Jennifer Caroccio Maldonado, PhD @drcaromaldo.blacksky.app · 03/07/2026

It is not on the source to fact check the book that is about to be published! Cleves didn't read the draft because she was busy, which is her right since is not her responsibility to have done the publisher's and editors jobs! Walden, D&Q and the editors should have followed up!

Tillie was in touch with Cleves in April 2025 as she sent her a manuscript a year before publication stating the Museum had already made edits, to which Cleves replied with a single edit/comment as well as words of praise: "Im already blown away by the historicity of it, and by the fullness of the characterization, and by the art, of course.

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Jennifer Caroccio Maldonado, PhD @drcaromaldo.blacksky.app · 03/07/2026

Again, the "pitchforks and bale hay" is a bit much and a little snarky for an official communication. When we said "be gay do crimes" we didn't mean be gay and adapt a whole ass biography without proper attribution and license 🫠

We will close this by stating while pitchforks and hay bales are appropriate imagery for the time period in which Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake lived, we are asking for people to put down their pitchforks and consider the remarkable lives of Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake and their story, which is their own that they created together as pioneering historical women, and to enjoy the remarkable separate and distinct contributions by two contemporary pioneering women, Rachel Hope Cleves and Tillie Walden
May the lives of Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake continue to be told and shared in a myriad of ways.

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Jennifer Caroccio Maldonado, PhD @drcaromaldo.blacksky.app · 03/07/2026

Two things: 1) a marketing team of one can still mess up. 2) if Cleves' book was so important it would have been properly cited IN THE comic itself

D+Q's *marketing" is the work of one person, who works 40-60 hours a week deeply believing that our cartoonists deserve sustained, sincere promotion in mainstream media. She is good at her job, and this book has been in the New York Times, Boston Globe, and CBC Q, all of which cited the importance of Cleves's 2014 book, with the New York Times interviewing and quoting Cleves.

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Jennifer Caroccio Maldonado, PhD @drcaromaldo.blacksky.app · 03/07/2026

Not sure what Cleves' credentials have anything to do with it unless they are spinning the big mean academic is terrorizing some indie comics artist. No where have I seen Cleves say anything denigrating Walden's economic status or training.

As an Ivy league, UC Berkeley graduate, and UVic professor who has dedicated her academic career to gender, sexuality. and history, Cleves understands copyright for scholarly and nonfiction works. And we would have to think Cleves understands that scholarly work serves to inspire as well as inform. We trust that Cleves, as a tenured professor in Victoria, British Columbia and thus a fellow Canadian, understands the stark reality and danger of being queer and being an artist in America right now, of being a queer couple and parents, and the general day-to-day economic and societal differences between the two countries for every American.

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Jennifer Caroccio Maldonado, PhD @drcaromaldo.blacksky.app · 03/07/2026

Either Walden is this prolific cartoonist who built a sizeable platform and so she is capable of taking accountability for her mistakes. Or she this is this defenseless queer victim in Trumps America that D&Q is painting her to be. It's neither the point and also a little patronizing to Walden.

We are asking for the recognition of the labour of a cartoonist. Tillie's "platform" is due to more than a decade of work doing a physical art form, creating more than fifteen books and being quite successful at it. Anyone in comics will tell you how remarkable this output is
Maybe Tillie is preternaturally productive, or maybe as a 30-year-old who has been drawing and writing professionally since she was a teenager, it is out of necessity. Tillie is a contract-to-contract worker in central Vermont who pays out of pocket every month for her family's healthcare and survives with no benefits or job security. She and her wife live in Trump's America, which is currently rolling back protections for the LGBTO+ community as well as for artists, specifically federal funding for artists via the NEA and via federal support for fine arts masters programs, such as the Center for Cartoon Studies where Tillie studied and where she teaches on a contract basis.

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Jennifer Caroccio Maldonado, PhD @drcaromaldo.blacksky.app · 03/07/2026

Calling comics artists and scholars discussing the issue on social media an online mob is a bit much and not a great way to start. They do not provide any evidence that Walden's comic is not an unauthorized adaptation.

Shortly after sending our official comments to inquiring press, citing the many times Rachel Hope Cleves had been credited in Tillie Walden's Charity and Sylvia-as well as online, on air, and in print-the accusations changed from no credit to charges of the D&Q book being an unauthorized adaptation.
We would like to put forth a couple of points in defence of Tillie Walden, cartoonists, and comics scholarship in regard the online mob that has formed this week on Bluesky who are currently sending us threatening emails, demanding that people destroy Tillie's career, negative review bombing various sites, telling stores and librarians not to carry the graphic novel, and more.

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Jennifer Caroccio Maldonado, PhD @drcaromaldo.blacksky.app · 02/07/2026

The citation can be found at the back of the book.

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Jennifer Caroccio Maldonado, PhD @drcaromaldo.blacksky.app · 02/07/2026

Final example, this time of in-text citations from Queenie: Godmother of Harlem by Elizabeth Colomba and Aurélie Levy. Here they use an asterisk as an endnote