A Very Long Instagram Caption Re: My Birthday That I’m Posting Here, Instead — I’ve been silent online for most of the year leading up to this, my 35th birthday, because simply put, I had no words. Ran clean out of them. And when you’ve built your livelihood — and reputation, and self-worth — on words, that’s a miserable place to be. So far…

Snapshots of my Black history — What the textbooks never taught me about Black history, growing up, is that it sat beside me on a plastic-wrapped couch most Sundays, watching reruns of Baywatch over microwaved TV dinners. The lectures never acknowledged that the people who were spat on — taunted, threatened, denied basic human rights on…

Spotify recently released their annual year-in-review…experience?, which is pretty much the only year-end content I care about (sorry, “Auld Lang Syne”). I love reflecting on the flavor of my year through the songs I had on repeat — taken in sum, they reveal the unconscious layers of an era, details…

I’m a big fan of 911. As a kid, I watched Rescue 911 religiously. When my little sister shoved a Lite-Brite peg into the depths of her nasal passage, my first responder six-year-old ass had the phone off the cradle and the 9–1 dialed before my mom could say “tweezers.”…

The creatures that stole my heart — and possibly, my sanity? — Growing up, I was what you’d call boy-crazy. There seemed to be no limit to the number of crushes I could simultaneously manage; logistical issues of geography, age, availability, and physical existence mattered little, if at all. I had crushes on cartoon characters (Dale of Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers…

Growth is a creative process — but don’t discount the wisdom of your younger self — When I first began writing online over a decade ago, I wasn’t just building the foundations for my eventual career — I was awakening to the notion that I had a voice. And it was an intoxicating discovery: I had no shortage of things to say, and I lacked the…

In his beautiful braided essay “Last Boat to the San Juan Islands,” Andrew Jazprose Hill achieves the impossible: He makes me miss the ferry. Reading about his ride with a dying woman and her family was, for me, a sensory experience: I could taste the salt-licked wind, the desperation of…

Birding, jogging, and biking all sound like innocuous ways to spend a little time outdoors, unless you happen to be Black. On Sunday night, two LA County Sheriff deputies attempted to stop 29-year-old Dijon Kizzee as he was riding his bike, which he was apparently doing in “an unlawful manner.”…