Jan 18, 2022
My Father Taught Me to Pursue Excellence. Coffee Taught Me About Satisfaction.
An obsession with excellence creates an unfortunate binary: all or nothing.
I Rediscovered Who My Grandfather Was by Reading His Book
To know him beyond the frail, serious man who struggled to speak to his family was such a rare and incredible gift.
Jan 05, 2022
From Sicily, With Love
My father never took me to Sicily himself, and I yearned to go. I yearned to know the people he knew—and one person he’d never met.
Dec 14, 2021
Longing for the Magic of My Childhood Home
Frarieville was the safe space on which I could plant my flag.
Dec 02, 2021
Searching for Home in the South with Carson McCullers
Quietly, I clung to what I knew: how to be an outsider in the South.
Nov 24, 2021
Seeing Cuba from a Parking Lot in Miami
I used to think Miami was a kind of carbon copy of Havana. But I was wrong. We are not a copy, but a conversation.
Nov 03, 2021
Little Girl, Big Dinosaur Costume
Fashion is about more than looking good, or feeling comfortable—it’s about how your clothes tell your story.
Oct 29, 2020
What Is Left, What Is Held, What Is Grown As Roots
Always the most vulnerable will die. There will be others, too, but it begins there. And we see, in slow moving real time, whose life is valued, whose life is not.
Sep 30, 2020
Afro-German Women are Still Upholding the Legacy of May Ayim
There have always been people suffering from anti-Blackness. And May Ayim highlights the continuity of the Black experience—not only her own, but those before her as well.
Sep 10, 2020
The Legacy of Malaga Island and the Limits of Maine’s Progressivism
Once a mixed-race fishing community, the island is now empty, showing the gap between the state’s history and what it professes to be.
Aug 24, 2020
Whiteness Can’t Save Us
Whiteness cannot give us what we need, and this is not a disappointment. This is a testimony.
Jun 10, 2020
My Family’s Relationship with the Unseen
Maybe my dreams were trying to tell me something. Maybe I had what I liked to call, jokingly, “the ElGenaidi Gift.”
Mar 04, 2020
Finding Faith in the House of Capricorn
To this day, I can’t tell you the names of my extended family in Taiwan—but I can tell you their astrological signs.
Jan 21, 2020
In an America on Fire, Baldwin’s Legacy Led Me to Paris
Just as America’s horrors led Baldwin to flee decades before, I waded through my own fear as a gay, black man coming of age in an America burning once again.
Dec 02, 2019
What My Grandmother’s Eyes Have Seen
Around the time I was in seventh grade, I started performing makeshift eye surgery on my grandmother.
Nov 04, 2019
Raising My Daughter to Be an Octopus Lover
“Hoba! Hoba!” my daughter screeches, using the short word for ‘hobotnica’—octopus in Croatian. My friend says, “She’s Croatian alright.”
Oct 21, 2019
I Found the Queer Role Model I Always Needed in My Long-Lost Cousin
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.
Aug 15, 2019
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
