Sep 04, 2019
This Is About Smoking
I’m coming apart like the first cigarette I ever rolled. Loose, slobbering, and burning too fast.
Three Car Crashes and the Long Afterward
The story is no longer me and my vehicles but my mother and hers. We called it an accident, but it wasn’t.
Jul 22, 2019
For My Father, Every Time Is Wartime
A part of me, the part trained to put my father first, thought I should allow him into my home, regardless of his threats.
Jul 02, 2019
After My Mother Passed, My Father’s Consistency in Religion Was an Anchor
A new period in my life started when Abu could no longer fast for Ramadan.
Jun 24, 2019
The Summer I Became a Thief
Sometimes I thought of it as war reparations. On the outwardly civil but quietly vicious battlefield of my parents’ divorce, I had been the clear loser.
Apr 29, 2019
The Rhythms We Keep Since My Mother’s Stroke
The slight din of the television on TVLand from her room made its way toward the kitchen where Curtis and I sat, trying to figure out how this was all going to go. How everything had changed.
Apr 15, 2019
The Partition Museum Reminded Me That India’s History Is Also My Family’s History
Before I visited the Partition Museum, I had a sense that all the years of self-erasure could be undone if I just heard, watched, read enough. Now I’m beginning to rethink that strategy.
Apr 03, 2019
The Mother I Choose to Remember Is the Mother Who Didn’t Want to Lose Me
“I realized I had to change or I was going to lose you,” my mother told me. “So I did.”
Mar 28, 2019
With His Absence, My Artist Father Taught Me the Art of Vanishing
My father was missing. How could I put him back in the picture?
Feb 06, 2019
When My Grandfather Dies, No One Will Say He Was “Gone Too Soon”
When my grandfather threatened to kill himself, I began to wonder if, as he sees it, he has effectively stopped living.
Jan 16, 2019
Here If You Need Me: Learning to Be Present While Fighting for Your Father
When fighting on behalf of the father you love, who do you become?
Jan 10, 2019
My Fathers and Hip-Hop Taught Me About Self-Care as A Black Man
If cancer and trauma are hereditary, is it not my responsibility to do everything in my power to ensure neither my children nor I have to suffer?
Oct 09, 2018
When Your Immigrant Mother Fights For Your Education—And You Fail
With words, spelled correctly or not, I could say exactly how I felt: like my head was a ball of snakes, like something extraordinary for once.
Oct 01, 2018
My Grandfather Helps Me Find Myself, Even Though He's Gone
My family isn’t religious, but we have a saying that we do believe in my grandfather. And an essay he wrote about me reminds me to believe in myself.
Sep 18, 2018
Loving Your Immigrant Parents, Superstitions and All
There’s a distinct kind of relationship that privileged first-generation children have with their immigrant parents.
Aug 23, 2018
How Reading True Crime Stories Helps Us Face Our Own Fears
“Not thinking about these things doesn’t make them go away. So, instead, I choose to look. It is staring into a dim room and letting my eyes adjust to the dark.”
Aug 09, 2018
How A War in the Middle East Changed My Family in the Philippines Forever
Papa left the summer I turned eight. The emotional toll of a wife who blamed him was too much to carry along with the burden of repatriating thousands of Filipino citizens.
Aug 07, 2018
Up and Under: On Water, Fatherhood, and the Perils of Both
“The nurse sucked the last of his water world out of him. And then the cry, a goodbye to that wet planet.”
Jul 19, 2018
