The Tunnel: A Sacred Place By James Eric Watkins
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...
Category: Identity
3 Minute Read/Aliens/Food/Identity/Immigrants/Inspirational/Literature/Loss/Love/Memoir/Memory/nonfiction/On Writing/On Memory/Storytelling/writing
Sourdough, Ancestors, and Other Recipes for Time Travel by Edvige Giunta
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...
Glimpses of My Father’s Hands by Brent L. Kendrick
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...
10 Minute Read/20 Minute Read/Black Memoirs Matter/Escape/Family/Food/Identity/Immigrants/nonfiction
Triptych: African Portraits by Joanne Godley
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...
15 Minute Read/ACEs/Adversity/Craft Essays/Featured/Family/Girls & Women/Identity/Immigrants/Inspirational/Love/Man in The Mirror/Memoir/Memory/Mommy Dearest/Mothers/Mothers and Daughters/nonfiction/On Writing/On Memory/Parenting/personal essay/Race Matters/Regret/Relationships/Sexism/Society/Survival/trauma
How 90 Day Fiancé Helped Me Tell My Story as the Child of a Mail Order Bride by Katya Suvorova
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...
Dementia/12 minute read/Adversity/Aging/Alzheimer's/Art/Being Body/Family/Food/Grief/Health/Identity/Inspirational/Literature/Loss/Memory/nonfiction/Sexism/Society/Survival
“Iris on My Mind” by Odeta Xheka
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...
Dementia/7 Minute Read/Aging/Bi-Polar/Cancer/Depression/Family/Fathers/Girls & Women/Grief/Health/Identity/Loss/Love/Medicine/Memory/Mental Illness/Mothers/Mothers and Daughters/nonfiction/personal essay/Relationships/trauma
The Hope of Better Hearing Aids by Rosann Tung
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...
10 Minute Read/Adversity/Black Memoirs Matter/Escape/Identity/Immigrants/Inspirational/Justice/Man in The Mirror/Memoir/morality/nonfiction/personal essay/Race Matters/Society/Storytelling/trauma
“Into the Racial Divide, A Story of Hope” by Jerry Waxler
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 ...
10 Minute Read/Black Memoirs Matter/Family/Identity/Justice/Literature/Loss/Man in The Mirror/Memoir/Mental Illness/nonfiction/personal essay/Race Matters/Religion/Society/trauma
Main Street Madness by Mary McBeth
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...
3 Minute Read/Anorexia/Featured/Family/Health/Identity/Literature/Mental Health/Mental Illness/nonfiction/trauma
Harrowing by Natalie Coufal
In the black-and-white photo I hold, Dad delivers his salutatorian speech to a small crowd. Dated May 1959, the picture is unremarkable except for Dad’s skeleta...
1 in 300 by Cephas Barbosa
Formally coming out at 19 in the mid-’80s was a catastrophe ruled by fear. Fear, fear, fear. Fear of HIV and AIDS. It was a panic that molded my life and ruled ...
5 Minute Read/Aging/Alzheimer's/Being Body/Featured/Family/Girls & Women/Grief/Identity/Inspirational/Loss/Mothers/Mothers and Daughters/nonfiction
Telephone Booth by Molly Bashaw
Working with the bees, I am not just looking at the same insects my mother once looked at, I am also becoming her. I am lying down in her body and standing up. ...
Mammalian Diving Response by Olivia Swasey
I step out of the water. I have not drowned. I am new, just born today. The scars that mark my body and my heart have not been rinsed away, but I feel so new an...
10 Minute Read/Adversity/Being Body/Featured/Family/Fathers/Funny/Gender Non-conforming/Identity/Inspirational/LGBTQ/Love/Man in The Mirror/nonfiction/Parenting
Morning Boy by Stephen Palgon
Before my wife and I got married, my mother told me that my father had expressed concern about my future brother in law’s gayness being passed along to our chil...
15 Minute Read/Adversity/Childhood/Escape/Family/Identity/Inspirational/Institutions/Justice/Man in The Mirror/morality/nonfiction/personal essay/Race Matters/Society
Turning Left: The Case for Social Democracy by N. S. G. Holm
Leaning Left, 2:1, millennials want America to be an “us” society. They call it socialism, but this is incorrect. They do not want state ownership and control o...