I fiddled my earrings off, one by one

“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.”…

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Burrowing deeper and deeper,

“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,…

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My concept of racism

“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.”

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Strangers beyond any further connection

We all live behind white picket fences, right? Or at least we think everyone else does. We all believe that everyone else lives a sheltered life and that ours is the only one screwed up, right? A few years ago, I went back to college to learn Spanish. One of…

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