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...
I’ve been to thousands of death scenes. I knew what your family would say even before they found you. I know you’re the third suicide that this firefighter has ...
In the United States about six million people over 65 live with Alzheimer’s disease. You wonder how much your mother knew and if she suffered. Looking back, ...
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...
I read the Bible each morning partly because I want to know the scriptures; I read partly because I want my ears to be healed; I read partly because I want to b...
Memoir Magazine is delighted to share the winners of the 2023 Memoir Prize for Books! Congratulations to our Grand Prize winner, Finalists, and Category winners...
“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...
He was disheveled and smelled like cooked grease and cigarettes. It was an odor I associated with his being poor and hemmed in. There was so much about our life...
Maybe I should tell her that Daddy drives with his knees while poking triangle holes in beer cans? Or that he once fell out his car door while rounding a corner...
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 ...
Dr. Joy is the best therapist ever. She acknowledges my feelings around generational trauma and my fractured relationship with my Korean Tiger Mom.
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...
My favorite grade school teacher was Miss George (the title Ms did not yet exist) in fourth grade. I had a crush on her, though I would not have thought of it t...
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...
As we reach a million COVID deaths in the USA and counting, how do we mourn such a large loss as a country? How do we hold all those families who are coping wit...
“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,” ...
The altar is a yellow pine table, an unadorned platform for the laying out of grief and slivers of hope. It befits the geography of these mountains. It’s mess...
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