The country where I spent my childhood was lively, filled with pockets of joy hidden within nature: hot, sunny days spent walking to the beach; calypso beats echoing in my ears and through my limbs; sand in between my toes; the sticky residue of saltwater and mangoes still on my lips hours after leaving. The […]
It is dark. A smell of cigarette smoke and alcohol creeps along the walls to the young boy’s room. He lays there trying to sleep, but the knife-like pain from his empty stomach keeps him awake. He wraps himself further in the musty comforter; the warmth from it collides with the coldness of his tears. […]
“And this, this right here, is Morning Glory. See the purple around the leaf?” Ed questioned with a gruff voice. I nodded as I saw it – the way one vine had a purplish tinge around its petioles while the other did not. So together, Ed and I pruned back the invasive Morning Glory to […]
I used to have a designated stool to stand on in the kitchen for the sole purpose of watching my mother cook, eyeing every movement, every gesture, every ingredient. At first I would merely watch, my eyes devouring every action and scanning each recipe with eagerness, before I could even identify the words guiding each […]
In 2017, only 7 months since the Inauguration of Donald J. Trump, the city of Charlottesville, Virginia burst into Chaos. Groups of Neo-Nazis and White Supremacists flooded the streets, chanting “White Lives Matter” and “Blood and Soil.” The alt-right group was met by a group of counter-protesters, defending the choices of the left and the […]
There’s a line from the song Carefree, by Chicago rapper Mick Jenkins that says “If your living carefree then you probably don’t look like us.” There is an understanding among black folk that every day you leave your house requires you to examine, critique, judge, and observe yourself in the harshest way possible through the eyes […]
It was November of 2006 in Lawrence, Kansas. With a midwestern Autumn already well in its turn, biting temperatures made it nearly unbearable to stand outside for long. Yet, there I was: eight years old, snug in a puffy coat, bolstering a campaign sign that read “Sebelius” across the front. In Kansas, November not only […]