Our teacher had said she thought the Negroes were going too far. I had raised my hand and disagreed. “Too far from what?” I had asked.
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...
We bought the trailer after Trump became president, a safety net, in the probability of needing a means of escape. Maybe Canada then on to Cuba? At least it eas...
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 ...
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 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...
“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,” ...
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...
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...
Now Open for Submissions: Black Memoirs Matter. The Anthology.
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 ...
She was frequently absent from my class, sat in the back with another African American student, and never participated. I wrote notes on her papers to come to ...
An Excerpt from The Memoir Prize 2021 Honorable Mention: Our Family Walks by Nick R. Robinson; unpublished manuscript.
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...
An Excerpt from The Memoir Prize 2021 Grand Prize Winner: Relief by Execution: A Visit to Mauthausen, by Gint Aras.
“there’s no such thing as the Easter Bunny and there’s no Santa Claus—remember, we’re Jewish!”
They did not think: moonlit bank where my ancestors were unloaded from ships or branch from which bodies once swung. They did not have to...
