This originally appeared in the Houston Chronicle. Asylum seekers at the border have always been just a step or two away from complete disaster. Sickness, crime, desperation, and heartless immigration policies have taken their toll. But I never expected a virus to be the ultimate threat. Since last July I have been volunteering with Team Brownsville, a nonprofit organization that […]
This poem originally appeared in eMerge and was inspired by my volunteer work at the southern border, and the impact of the “Remain in Mexico” policy on asylum seekers there. there is the Rio Bravo, a green viper you could ride away from the tent city but for remembering Oscar’s failed swim baby girl tucked in his shirt, wriggling gulping, […]
On a visit to the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta this week I participated in an exhibit that simulates the experience of lunch counter sit-ins that helped integrate restaurants in the 1960s. Museum visitors sit, four at a time, at the counter and put on headphones. They place their hands on the counter and are instructed […]
In mid-July I volunteered assisting migrants on the Texas-Mexico border, carrying donated items from community members in Houston. I wrote this to thank the donors and describe my experience. As I drove to Brownsville last week to volunteer helping migrants at the Mexican border with Team Brownsville, I only had to glance at the back seat, where bags and bags […]
This article originally appeared in The Lily. When I was a kindergartener in the 1960s, I, like many other little girls, owned a Barbie. She was a miniature blonde with a big bosom and a tiny waist and wide, surprised-looking eyes. She had rubbery legs that bent at the knee, which I moved back and forth so much they eventually […]
This originally appeared in The Lily, a Washington Post magazine. The rally began at noon with the clamor of dozens of motorcycles, and ended with the release of purple and white balloons into the afternoon sky. On Saturday, hundreds of people gathered in the parking lot of the Walmart at 5655 E. Sam Houston Parkway, the scene of Jazmine Barnes’s […]
Call me a snowflake. I own it. At some point in the latter days of the 2016 election, some right-wing Twitter users created an artificial identity divide, calling themselves “deplorables” and Trump critics “snowflakes.” If one is a snowflake simply by virtue of anger at injustice, watch me melt. On the evening of November 8, 2016, as commentators on CNN […]
