I don’t remember how old I was when my parents bought the brown metallic closet with the mirror on the front, but its presence in our home goes back as far as my memory of self does. I…
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By age 6, I knew what nostalgia meant, and it already felt like a dirty word. Nostalgia was a lecture about old Africa, how things were better back then and there, yet again. Nostalgia was guilt and irritation, especially to…
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“If y’all weren’t so difficult, maybe it’ll be easier to get a man.” “Y‘all? Difficult?” I repeat the triggering words as if they can somehow mean something else. They sting differently when they come from a man who shares the…
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My grandma’s house was always full. The hinges on the front door were almost invisible. In the heart of Cleveland, Ohio, not a side town along the way,…
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The Traveling Refugee. She watched her ancestors burn and hang. In the land of the free. In the land of the brave. They have known many graves. Unwilling…
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“If y’all weren’t so difficult, maybe it’ll be easier to get a man.” “Y‘all? Difficult?” I repeat the triggering words as if they can…
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The day Chiamaka disappeared, her father left the house in precisely three pieces. The first piece left at sunset, when the world, consumed by…
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No roads led here, this place like a scar of an old wound. No signs marked its location, no post hung with its name.…
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It’s not right for a daughter to see her father naked. I’m sure my father knows this, and deep down in her heart, my mother…
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My daughter is black. Skin like turned earth. Eyes the color of midnight. A black freckle on the underside of her wrist matches mine and…
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I sat on the couch of a woman who decorates her office to make it feel like a home outside your own. She has locs…
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The clock on the kitchen wall said 8:45 pm. Fifteen more minutes and Trysten would be in bed. I stood in front of the sink…
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I remember the night we met in Atlanta. On a cold evening in December, I turned around and there he was. 6’4″, beautiful mocha skin, an electric smile escaping full…
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When she hears his car door shut close behind him, Queen has just finished her to-do list. She writes one every day, not because she…
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Luz had faked a pregnancy in order to get the attention of her ex-boyfriend Johnny Rivera and kept it going for six months. Not only…
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