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Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
A Face In Judgment
A young man stands at the lectern: nineteen years old, athletic, thick black hair down to his shoulders. I’ll call him Marco. Today my job is to decide whether to send him to prison.
September 2023
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
The Psychic Is In
Being exposed to psychics at such a young age was like being raised Catholic or vegetarian: you continue living out these belief systems even after they no longer serve you.
August 2023
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Run Home
Long-distance running is the dogged refusal to bend to the way you feel. It is the accommodation of pain. If you run long enough, far enough, fast enough, you will carve out a place in yourself where pain can live.
August 2023
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Coach’s Kid
Coach Walls started calling me “Tank.” Coach O’Brien said, “J.P. is out to kill.” Dad said nothing, but every time I looked at him — shin-high socks, gray shorts, V-neck tee with chest hair spilling out, whistle dangling around his neck — he was unable to hide his grin.
August 2023
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Chair/Body/Home
What would it take for me to no longer want to leave my body? What would it take for me to see my body as my home? I don’t know, really, except perhaps more exposure to different ideas about disability, different ideas about beauty and worth.
July 2023
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Footprints In Alabama
My mama’s family is Alabama for at least four generations. Though I grew up in Illinois, my soul is rooted here. So whenever anyone narrows their eyes and cocks their head to question how I — a Black woman — could possibly love this place, my answer has been: “Because generations of my people’s blood and footprints are in this soil.”
July 2023
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Care Warning
Take care of yourself during this essay, whatever that means for you. Perhaps you need to drink a lot of water or unwrap a snack (quietly please!) or play Angry Birds on your phone — whatever works to tamp down your discomfort.
June 2023
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Observations On Ice
We have been repeatedly warned about the dangers posed by calving ice. Yet I still hope to see it: a spectacle of devastation. Reveal yourself to me, I demand. The glacier answers with silence.
June 2023
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Field Guide to Falling Ill
I can’t say what it’s like to suffer from a severe, chronic illness, the kind that knocks your life into a new orbit. But I can tell you what it’s like to be in the postscript of illness, its undead state, where the crisis has passed but recovery isn’t certain. It’s a dull, heavy place.
May 2023
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
All-American
My perceived faults would be erased the day I donned the letter jacket that bore my last name across the back, all my inconvenient vowels blazing, with Cheerleader in a semicircle underneath.
May 2023
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