Postal worker DeNeita Watson is most likely to be spotted on the road — her daily 9-mile walking route through Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood, to be exact. After growing up with a single mother in South Carolina and having not one, but two children straight out of high school, she moved over ten years ago to take advantage of her familial support system in the city and leave behind memories of a destructive relationship. DeNeita talks to us about early motherhood, the physical ramifications of her job, and how her fashion sense has evolved over the years.
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Meet Isabel Sandoval
in Filmmaker
A groundbreaking trans filmmaker and actor whose work has screened around the world, Isabel is working on her third feature following the success of 2019 film Lingua Franca.
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Meet Emma Ramos
Meet NYC Passerby, Emma Ramos, a comedian and actress who shares with us how she prepares for a scene, including how she took initiative to start creating her own roles.
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Meet Nilea Alexander
Nilea is an entrepreneur and vintage collector. She owns Cafe Rue Dix and Marché Rue Dix with her husband in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights, where they also live.
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Meet Maura Walters
Maura Kutner Walters is an award-winning journalist who is currently an editor at New York Magazine's The Cut. Maura has held features editor roles at Town & Country and Harper's Bazaar and was the deputy editor of Bloomberg Pursuits and New York Magazine's special issues.
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Meet Paige Polk
in Teacher
Paige is a Brooklyn-based poetry teacher and filmmaker. Currently pursuing her master’s degree in Media Studies at Pratt, her work explores the intersection of art and advocacy, where the political and the creative coexist, unpacking gender, heritage, and sexuality with multimedia storytelling.
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Meet Emily Theobald
in Stylist, Photographer
Emily has many jobs, but mostly she is a stylist/model/photographers (sometimes all three at the same time). After growing up on Long Island, she moved to New York to study at FIT and has lived in Brooklyn ever since.
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Meet Kyla Marshell
in Writer
“Kyla is a graduate of Spelman College and the Writing M.F.A. at Sarah Lawrence College. She lives in New York, where she is working on a memoir about a chance encounter with a distant relative that leads her to research her family’s origins. Her poetry and prose have appeared in Blackbird, Gawker, the Guardian, O, the Oprah Magazine, the Poetry Foundation, SPOOK Magazine, Vinyl Poetry, and elsewhere. Her work has earned her numerous honors, including a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship.”
♫ LISTEN TO KYLA'S PLAYLIST | LAST GOOGLE SEARCH
Streetstyle Details: Top, Forever 21 ; Jeans, H&M // PHOTOGRAPHY BY Michelle Peralta
“I started writing very young—in Kindergarten. I really enjoyed doing it, and was celebrated for it, so I just kept going. I started writing poetry as a teenager, and over the last few years, I became serious about writing creative nonfiction. I am also a freelance writer which I do with equal parts pride and annoyance.”
“My morning routine is very, very basic. I shower, dress, and eat breakfast. I usually listen to music as I get dressed; if it’s Tuesday, I’ll listen to the Another Round podcast or 2 Dope Queens.”
“I’m writing a book that explores the relationships with family I’ve met later in life, and by surprise—everyone from siblings I’d never met to a white cousin (who didn’t know she was black!). There’s a travel element to it—going to my ancestral homeland to meet some of these people, dig through old court records; there’s secret identities, murder. People keep asking me if this is a novel, but it’s actually my life.”
Kyla's favorite book
“I picked Letters to a Young Poet because it is my personal secular art bible. It’s gotten me through some very tough times, when I felt lost, or confused, or alone. Over and over, I’ve said to myself that great, famous quotation from Letter 4: “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” I’ve been slowly embroidering that quotation onto a ribbon as well.”
“For better or worse, I don’t have a real beauty routine. I would like to think this is because I am a “natural beauty”—but really, I don’t get into products, because I don’t want to be dependent on them. My hair pretty much looks the same no matter what I do or don’t do to it, but I try to moisturize it, at least, with shea butter and oil. I wear tinted moisturizer, eyeliner and blush—more so for myself than for the appearance (I doubt I look much different with so little makeup on). I try to make sure things are paraben-free, and as simply made as possible.”
“Simple is better. Whenever I’m nervous about going somewhere or meeting someone, thinking, ‘Should I put on more makeup?’ I just remember that no one ever liked me because I had on mascara.”
“Because I’m old inside, I have always shopped at a lot of vintage or consignment stores. For a while, I was using Stitch Fix to find new clothes. I don’t have pierced ears, so I wear a lot of vintage earrings—I like Pippin Jewelers in Manhattan. I’m inclined to wear solid colors instead of prints or patterns—I prefer textures.”
SHOP HER WISHLIST
RECOMMENDATIONS
✓ Four & Twenty Blackbirds this pie shop in Brooklyn is divine
✓ Ample Hills Creamery ice cream (I’m very into fancy ice cream.)