Aug 15, 2019
How I Found My Long-Lost Cousin, the Queer Role Model I Always Needed
I wish I’d known Molly years ago. I wish I had known her when I was twelve years old, wondering who in my life would still love me if they knew my secret.
A Eulogy for All the Black Boys Who Loved the Sky
I’m longing for the day when folk like me and Trayvon and Korryn and Lennon and Aiyana and Botham don’t need to be lucky to stay alive.
Jul 11, 2019
What Does a Multigenerational Mixed-Race Family Look Like?
As biracial people, my husband and I should know how to raise a mixed-race child. But I find myself wondering just how much I’ve figured out.
Jun 17, 2019
Speak of the Dead: Seeking the Stories of My Refugee Family
The first generation of refugees have the power of selective memory. Children like me learned early to tiptoe around our families and their traumas.
May 08, 2019
“The Community Is Hurting”: Why We Need to Talk About Colorism and Bias in Asian American Communities
It feels jarring to deal with “model minority” stereotypes in non-Asian American spaces while facing negative stereotypes within some Asian ones.
May 02, 2019
Losing Whiteness When You Lose Your Father
To lose whiteness is to compress the white half, to describe it awkwardly, to never know how to address it.
Apr 11, 2019
I Defend Survivors to Keep My Grandfather’s Legacy Alive
If my grandfather could remain optimistic into his eighties, then how could I let myself become jaded in my twenties?
Apr 01, 2019
I Wanted to Know Why the Ocean Ate My Grandfather
As a child of many cultures, I wasn’t sure I could lay claim to one. But I learned that identity can grow and stretch, widen and encompass more than a single country or language.
Feb 26, 2019
Our Mothers’ Violence and What’s Left After
Our mothers wanted to protect us. So they hid us, beat us for having opinions, for being too inquisitive in a world that doesn’t permit girls to be curious about things.
Jan 28, 2019
What Is Common, What Is Rare: Why Extraordinary Events Cannot Eclipse Everyday Racism
We’d denounce the marches and torches and chants. When that moment passed, we’d continue to live with the ghosts of our country’s peculiar legacy.
Jan 14, 2019
I Named My Daughter After the Woman I Wish She Could Have Met
Something unexpected cracks me open every year: Tonight, it was my daughter, recognizing the name I’d given her because I couldn’t give her the woman herself.
Nov 21, 2018
Unheard Grief, Unmovable Men: How an Old Mexican Folktale Speaks to Our Pain Today
All the wrong people are crying, and all the people who ought to feel something do not.
Nov 05, 2018
How People Live and Pray Between Massacres
“I never knew my not looking like or having the accent of my father’s people would save my life.”
Oct 10, 2018
“Mrs. Patten Would Doubtless Be of Service if a Man”: Mary Patten and Shirley Jackson, Two Women Who Broke the Mold
Patten didn’t undress for fifty days while onboard Neptune’s Car because “the threat of rape had never been far from her mind.”
Jul 26, 2018
What Internment Did to My Family
The court finally condemned Korematsu v. US, but the lessons of history are being overlooked by those claiming to have recognized them.
Jul 11, 2018
Peanut Farming, Robert E. Lee, and a Virginia Family's Legacy
Slaves brought peanuts from Africa and planted them across the South, where they were used as animal feed.
Apr 16, 2018
Know Their Names: Women Composers Neglected By History
“I once believed that I had creative talent, but I have given up this idea,” Clara Schumann wrote in her diary in 1839.
Apr 04, 2018
Hear These Activists on Gabriel’s Failed Slave Rebellion
Richmond could offer a bold challenge to historical narratives about the South, the Confederacy, and American slavery.
Mar 14, 2018
The Lie Beneath the Story of My Family’s Asian American Dream
The story affirms our goodness by assuring us we did it on our own. The story tells us to not make waves.
Nov 09, 2017
A New Myth: Untethering My Name from White Folks’ Imaginations
“Names bind us to people, places, and histories. As the descendant of enslaved people, my name only goes so far.”
Oct 18, 2017
