“People can have crushes just on boys or just on girls???… Why? How does it work? What’s wrong with-” “There is NOTHING wrong with them! Don’t say that!” ...
This was 1972 and gay sex was definitely taboo. Not only was it against the law, the president of the university, a rabid segregationist, also hated queers. He ...
On this night, I have to beg permission from the hospital authorities to let you leave so you can join the Seder...I don’t look up to the heavens when I am on t...
Our Spanish teacher is not allowed to teach us anymore. This is because she kissed a woman and in our tiny Catholic school, this is against our policy. Theresa ...
My grandparents raised peas, lettuce, and cantaloupe on a 140-acre seaside ranch since 1915, but they could not buy the land, only lease it. Unlike European imm...
My body has changed like my surroundings, too. Instead of the 15-year-old I was when I went to sleep, I am now the 18 year-old-version of myself that I will wor...
Maybe history doesn’t really change at all and we’re just actors reincarnated in different costumes. In this particular production, Floyd has become Black Jesu...
But I don’t say that, instead I will say that I’m going to build a Tiny House, and ditch the double-wide. That way they will be awed instead by my quirky ingenu...
In short order, I went from liar to thief. I took my brother's silver dollar collection. No one spent old silver dollars, so when I tried, the manager of the 7...
As a girl coming-of-age in the late 1980’s, I was told I could go anywhere and be anything I wanted to be, but of course, no one could tell me how to do this, o...
*Featured Artwork by Mark Hurtubise I never met anyone I thought was crazy. Until the day I met myself. I was lying on the couch nodding off into an afternoon n...
The Museum of Past Grievances by Jax Peters Lowell Featured Image: “In de maneschijn” by Martine Mooijenkind My beloved won’t answer the phone. He’s...
Even though four yards or more of open air separated our being, in those moments, we were one, brothers. I could feel my Sioux and Cherokee heritage run through...
Memoir is about absence, emptiness; it’s about crossing divides–of time, space, language, and that ultimate divide between the living and the dead. It’s standin...
Sister knew my father longer—and better. Living closer to my father than I, she had spent more time with him. Being more blessed than I, Sister had more than e...
Reconciling the discordance between your perception of how you wished to be accepted and the reality of how you were viewed and treated in West Africa was a pai...
I don’t have a mom who fell in love how I was able to fall in love. My mother is a survivor in a way most Americans won’t ever understand. I am honored to be th...
Most days, I manage to distract myself from the horror of losing my bearing and blurring the lines in the fog of forgetfulness. I carry the markers for Alzheime...
I try to cool the heat in my cheeks that her sarcastic “wise, rich daughter” comment brings on. Her walker embarrasses me, too – unsightly, attention-seeking, d...
In 2020, George Floyd's sadistic public murder ripped away the grand illusion of universal empathy at the core of the American Promise and vividly demonstrated ...
