Bedugul Coffee: If the criminal justice system treated other music the way it treats rap

The Huffington Post

This week we're talking about Frida Kahlo's love letters, rap and the criminal justice system, women's prisons in Afghanistan, DIY seders and Amber Tamblyn's haunting poems.

Amber Tamblyn's Haunting Poems Illuminate The Lives Of Dead Actresses

"Amber Tamblyn writes about dead actresses. Icons like Jean Harlow and Marilyn Monroe people her powerful poems, but so do lesser-known starlets, such as Li Tobler, whose acting career was overshadowed by her relationship with a Swiss painter. Depressed, she died tragically at the age of 27. That Tamblyn herself is an Emmy-nominated actress doesn't influence her thematic choices directly; these women, she says, aren't so different from other women, who due to social norms are expected to perform in their own ways" (Read more here)

Stirring Photographs Document The Many Women Imprisoned In Afghanistan

"In 2010, Polish-Canadian photographer Gabriela Maj visited one of the various women's prisons in Afghanistan and was overwhelmed by the inmates' desires to share their stories, sometimes for the first time. This visit turned into a five-year photography project, capturing portraits of the remarkable women trapped in an unjust system. Even in the most wrongful of circumstances, many of the women Maj encountered remained positive, open and hopeful of their futures." (Read more here)

If The Criminal Justice System Treated Other Music The Way It Treats Rap

"Around the nation, police and prosecutors are using lyrics from rap songs to incriminate suspects and obtain convictions, often in the absence of traditional forms of evidence. In this way, rap music, and by extension the artists behind it, face unique scrutiny in the criminal justice system." (Read more here)

Frida Kahlo's Love Letters Give Glimpse Into The Guarded Artist's Private Life

"I don't know how to write love letters," Frida Kahlo wrote in 1946. "But I wanted to tell you that my whole being opened for you. Since I fell in love with you everything is transformed and is full of beauty... love is like an aroma, like a current, like rain." (Read more here)

The New Book That Delves Into Our National Problem With Violence

"Despite its stylistic limitations, The Harder They Come is a powerfully unsettling read, especially in a time of growing concerns about unchecked gun violence and the deadly consequences of the war on drugs." (Read more here)

Watch This Documentary To Understand The Institutionalized Racism In Ferguson

"'Mike Brown's death is connected to [St. Louis County's] predatory money making system of tickets and fines,' reporter and narrator Tim Pool says in director Orlando de Guzman's 'Ferguson: A Report From Occupied Territory.' He sees Brown's death as not the straw that broke the camel's back so much as 'a stone, a massive cinder block' further straining an oppressive, deeply broken system." (Read more here)

Take A Look Inside 160 Pages Of Jean-Michel Basquiat's Personal Diaries

"In 'Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks,' now running at the Brooklyn Museum until August 23, the genius of his fragmenting logic is revealed as a direct relationship between his private journals and his prolific and personally published aerosol missives on the streets of Manhattan's Soho and Lower East Side neighborhoods in the late 1970s and 1980s. These notebooks were for capturing ideas and concepts, preparing them, transmuting them, revising them, pounding them into refrains." (Read more here)

How To Host A DIY Passover Seder

"Ella Fainaru was a college student at Columbia University, separated from her family in Tel Aviv, Israel, when she realized how much she missed celebrating the Jewish holidays. She missed the traditions, the songs, the food and all that went along with the occasions. Now 26 and studying for a master's degree in economic development, also at Columbia, Fainaru has teamed up with friends to host their second 'do it yourself' Passover seder to maintain the traditions they grew up with -- and create some of their own." (Read more here)