essays

In the late 2010s, an explosion of young adult (YA) novels by Black women flooded through a previously White-dominated sphere, topping publisher lists week after week. Novels like Nicola Yoon’s The Sun Is Also a Star (2016), Nic Stone’s Dear Martin (2017), Angie...

When you read a lot of poetry, people tend to assume that you have grasped something ineffable. They might remark that you are a sensitive and empathetic person because you have spent so much of your life in the minds of others. As a reader, I will admit to...

We rarely need to ask what “self-service” means. When you fill up your gas tank on the way to work, or surreptitiously mix Coke with horchata at the soda fountain, or withdraw $40 from an ATM, you understand the procedure. The logic and technologies of self-service...

When I first read The Autobiography of Malcolm X, it stirred up feelings of indignation, confusion, and disappointment.  However, more than anything, this book made me think. That is the beauty of this book, not that it necessarily made me believe in Malcolm X’s...

The creative landscape is changing. Some might say not nearly fast enough, but change usually occurs in waves—some high and some low. Right now, I’d argue we are somewhere in the twilight of the high and low as various creative industries—namely publishing,...

Alma Sofia Esperanza José Pura Candela thinks her name is too long. When it doesn’t fit on a single sheet of paper, she tapes paper scraps onto the edges to make it fit. Alma then begins to question her place in the world, her name becoming a metonym for Latinx...

The Dashwood sisters are on the verge of a crisis. They are young, single, fatherless, and fortuneless; marriage is their only method of attaining financial and personal stability. But the kind of partnerships Elinor and Marianne Dashwood pursue, and the marriages...

I remember my thoughts as I walked into the book exhibit at a conference in London last summer: “Can I just snuggle amongst all the books?” That may sound a little ridiculous, but I’ve always loved being in settings where I could learn and read, particularly libraries...

The 2019 theme for the Writivism Literary Festival in Kampala, Uganda—“UnBreakable Bonds” —began with a question: what does it mean to be a prize competition, and by extension a publisher, only open to writers living on the African continent? Beneath this question are...

In 2018, the Latinx population in the United States reached 59.9 million.[1] Given the current climate of fear and uncertainty created by the policies of the Trump administration toward immigrant families as well as historical attitudes toward Latin American...

It’s early morning in Los Angeles as I walk a side street to a coffee shop to work on a revision of this essay. I’m listening to the audio version of the article “An Epidemic of Disbelief,” a story unearthing the patterns of institutional negligence by the police...

“Nydia, the Blind Flower Girl of Pompeii” is a marble sculpture designed by Randolph Rogers [1825–1892], and reproduced in two sizes for 167 copies. “Nydia” portrays how narratives can inspire art and, in turn, how art can function as a communicative medium that...