“The Dependent Unit was a place where kids went when their parents didn’t want them anymore, or when the courts deemed the children would be safer there until they could be placed into foster care or adopted. The now abandoned housing facility is located in front of Los Guilicos, Sonoma…
“My mom and our hostess were visiting and weren’t paying attention as I fiddled my earrings off, one by one. Tommy grabbed my hands into his across the table, lifted my arms, and gave me a big hug. As I pulled away, I saw him adjusting them in his mouth.”…
“I didn’t value their severity until her car pulled up to the gargantuan stone walls and expanded rolls of barbed wire. Again, I was confounded into silence. The long walk to the first of many doors I was about to go through felt like I was burrowing deeper and deeper,…
“My concept of racism was that it had ended years before and that in the 1980s it didn’t exist. Anger for the ignorance overwhelmed me.”
