The urge to move is nameless, both voluntary and involuntary. The trick is to get that far and then get out of the way. Follow it to the first words and then ...
Every now and again, Bobby will call me, or I’ll call him. We talk about politics, drama, scandal, funny stories, old friends, his son’s service in the Navy, my...
The child whose hand I held, my daughter whose brown skin matched the boys and the police and not my whiteness: I lifted her, not to see the scene, but the oppo...
My body is a series of numbers. I weigh 204, I wear a size 16. My waist is eight inches smaller than my hips, my breasts are 38B. I should probably go up to a 4...
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 ...
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...
“Up to 95 percent of Africa’s cultural heritage is held outside Africa by major museums. France alone holds 90,000 sub-Saharan African objects in its museums,” ...
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...
*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...
How do we treat agricultural workers severed from their families? We crush them together in trucks. Pack them in houses containing twenty men. Fail to supply pr...
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...
Afterward, at a nearby coffee shop, Pops and I munch on grilled cheese sandwiches and drink café con leche. We talk about the different jobs the workers do, how...
Such can be the power of a teacher’s words. I was certain that all my Gen Ed students had their own Miss Laughlin who turned them off to the joys of reading and...
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...
The waiting was unnerving. Alli asked almost daily when Daddy would go to jail. For a second-grader, jail was something imagined from cartoons. We did little to...
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 ...
I am lazy, fat, asinine, stupid. I still feel his red hot anger, the spit on my face, and the insults flying toward me. The feelings and labels remain, despite ...
*Featured Image by Rollin Jewett A few days after the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, I received a call from an organization ...
