When I was pregnant with my first child, I had a recurring dream. I was nursing a baby–in an icy parking lot, at a dinner party in the bedroom where the coats were piled on a bed, lost in the desert. I would nurse a baby at one breast, put her to the other, and there would be no milk. Sometimes the baby wailed with…
We're celebrating the Fourth of July at my cousin's McMansion in Lake Mary, Florida, a short stroll across a golf course to the Sanford line. I'm surrounded by kinfolk I haven't seen since the last funeral. We're sipping sweet wine, Baileys, and beer. We're telling the stories we always tell, and stories I've never…
The story of the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches has been documented countless times. What hasn't been explored with the same scope is the effect these momentous events had on townspeople living in Selma during that period. Growing up, my mom shipped me to Selma every summer to stay with my grandmother, Bernice…
I graduated from Harvard in 2006, and have spent eight of the last nine years working as an admissions officer for my alma mater. A low-level volunteer, sure, but an official one all the same. I served as one of thousands of alumni volunteers around the world—a Regional Representative for my local Schools Committee,…
"Each person should feel happy at work. They should feel happy with their task as creators. They should instill all those around them with their revolutionary and creative enthusiasm." — Che Guevara.
Few young creative writers in our world write so curiously and honestly out of our varied black American literary tradition as Andrew Elias Colarusso. The biracial son of an Afro-Puerto Rican mother and an Italian American father; Andrew writes, "Because I did and do have a loving relationship with my (white)…
Three months ago, I sat in my bed frustrated with myself. I was upset at all the life choices I'd made up until this point. Physically and mentally exhausted, I ran out to get an energy drink; I'd needed a caffeine-enriched charge to help meet a deadline. And then it happened: later, rushing to the bathroom, I…
Girls stole from me.
"If two people come together," my mother began, "who've never had any power except by the way of abuse, it's going to be bad. Both of us had power exerted over us as children. I eventually learned that as an adult, I was still doing the dance, seeking out abusive relationships. That doesn't mean it was my fault. But…
The scenario I'm about to describe has happened to me more times than I can count, in more cities than I can remember, mostly in Western cities here in the U.S. and Europe.
Davis and I met at a book party. I was bored, aimlessly drinking. I came with an editor in the hopes of meeting other well-connected, writerly people. As I approached the cocktail table our eyes met on something vast and turbulent between us. I knew then, as if the future folded out in panels before my eyes, that this…
New Orleans is transforming. The city's poorly constructed levees meant that when Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, it devastated the city, bringing in floodwaters that forced out residents and flattened neighborhoods. It also created an opportunity for developers and politicians to remake it anew. After the storm, New…
I met Marlon Peterson in 2009, a few months after he'd completed ten years of a 12-year sentence for first degree assault and third degree weapons possession. While Marlon was inside, I read his blog and some of the correspondences he'd exchanged with Nadia Lopez's eighth graders. I was amazed not simply by Marlon's…
When I talk about my downtown life as a kid, people ask how old I am. Growing up in New York City in the 70s was more like being an urchin of the 30s than a silver spoon of the 80s. I'm more likely to share recollections with a 70-year old—playing stoop, jumping off the piers—than to wax fondly upon the boy bands,…
Last Monday, on the night of the blizzard that talked a big talk but then never came, I was batting around an idea, one of many that had to do with the dating app Tinder, with my colleague Sam.
Late last year my cousin went missing. For weeks he was simply just gone. His cell phone was off and any attempt at tracking him was futile. If there were ever a time that I wanted Liam Neeson's character in Taken to be real, this was it.
Redlands, CA, March 2003
Saturday night, after reading Times columnist Charles Blow's account of his son's detainment at gunpoint by Yale campus police, I was transported back to my own run-in with UCLA campus police in 2009. It was a typically relaxed Sunday evening, and I was headed home from the library. As I passed Ackerman Student Union…
Growing up in a predominantly white, middle-class neighborhood in Seattle I remember my mother warning my older brother not to be caught running after dark, and, if ever stopped by police, to do whatever they asked—no more and no less. Speak as little as possible, she'd say. Every suggestion was a weak attempt to…
A pregnant woman I didn't know struck up a conversation with me at a party recently. We chatted amicably about the weather (bad), the Golden Globes (fine) and the food at the party (great) before the conversation turned—inevitably, it felt—towards birth (hers). She told me she was nervous but excited, that she could…
