The Funk of Poverty
My poverty is the most dangerous kind of poverty. It is religious. This is what I know, what my family and community know.
My poverty is the most dangerous kind of poverty. It is religious. This is what I know, what my family and community know.
The wall that divided us in those early weeks of my first child’s infancy became a continued separation.
My daughter understands object permanence—the idea that what vanishes continues to exist. As the planet warms, I worry I may have oversold the concept.
In the emergency room waiting for a potential diagnosis, I soothe myself with loops of pudgy toddlers tripping into the antics of babyhood over and over again.
My affirmations teach me the things I still need to learn.
I grieved the chance to have an uncomplicated pregnancy. I grieved the fact that having more babies could be potentially fatal. And I grieved a younger, more carefree me.
In the face of overlapping and unprecedented crises, an immigrant mom protects her family through play.
My mind is years ahead, trying to imagine an America whose cherished ideals hold true even for a little Black boy like mine.
When I first discovered I was pregnant, we were deep into a very strange spring.
I do not wish to have not been a parent. But I think it is normal to imagine new existences when the world is crumbling.
Nothing in my son’s life has gone according to plan. Why would school be any different?
When I say I love you, you know exactly what I mean, that this, our love, our family, is a small, fierce revolution.
Our son will grow up without grandmas, but we want him to remember these wonderful women he'll never get the chance to meet.
If there was one thing I was clearly not cut out for, it was being a stepmom.
We all have them, those unmet needs or wishes from our own childhood, the painful bits that creep in and affect how we parent.
On the heels of my diagnosis, I feel there is no way to construct a narrative around what’s happening to me—a deep betrayal for a writer.
Like a drawing is and is not mine once I’m finished with it, my son is not mine, not really, because he is himself.
In the battered barbershop chair, Faris sits slightly camouflaged and crumpled, as though he is a mystery even to himself.
Being disabled means hundreds of thousands of people believe they always know better than you do.
When you give birth to a life, you are also giving birth to a death.