Category: Nonfiction

by Matthew E. Henry Content warning: racial language and violence       This world is white and they are black.            —James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time He knows the myth, but he is the model minority. The all-around A-student: attentive, astute, Asian. He’s good at math and science, but also garners excellent grades and respect in my sophomore…

by Brenna Womer A sixteen-year-old high school junior goes to Zales in the mall with her boyfriend’s mother to pick out the ring she wants him to propose with. Both the girl and the mother know there’s only one diamond in the case he can afford—a fourth-carat stone in white gold—so they pretend it’s the…

by Kami Westhoff 1. Start from the place you now call home, where cherry blossoms erupt overnight and the scent of lilac lulls you into thinking maybe everything is going to be okay. A doe tracks you from the overgrown flowerbed, her eyes stitched to the blur of your body. She’s pregnant, stiffens as you…

by Harrison Geosits My mother is Filipino, fresh off the plane, and I am her half-breed son, the firstborn son, but I did not inherit her Pacific Islander DNA; I am not thin and tan and woman-hungry like her father and brother and nephews and other son, I do not have the same un-grown-up-ness; I…

by Elizabeth Vignali The northern white rhino will be extinct. My oldest daughter will get braces. I will go on a date with a social worker. I will throw away 540 sandwich bags. I will throw away a beat-up Barbie dollhouse too trashed to be donated. I will throw away forty-seven toothpaste caps, white-ridged floating…

by Matthew Mastricova When I was 12, I had to draw a scale model of myself in class. I did my best to obscure the measurements from my classmates, writing them as small and crooked as eyelashes. When I shrank myself down to a size that would fit on an 8.5×14” sheet of paper, I…

by Emrys Donaldson Susan Sontag led me to sodomy. When I read her work, I considered how my early art experiences were incantatory, magical; art was an instrument of ritual.i The moment when I started in surprise at the shade of gray used in a painting at the Fleming Museum because of its uncanny mimesis…

by Vero González A few months before leaving for Whidbey Island, I start having a recurring nightmare about miscarrying in the woods, alone. I don’t tell anyone. Why would I? I am not pregnant. I will be at Hedgebrook, a dream writing residency for women writers, for four weeks. I will figure out a structure…

by Eliza Smith Adapted from the Relationship Institute’s Couples Intake Questionnaire, written by Steven D. Solomon, Ph.D. and Lorie J. Teagno, Ph.D. Q: What is the problem that led you to couples therapy?A: I woke up last Thursday and realized that I didn’t want to be married anymore.  Q: How long have you and your…

by Sara Ryan violet is a spectral color. one might think the flower was named after the color, but it’s the other way around. violet has its own set of wavelengths on the spectrum of visible light. violet sounds a lot like violent. on the spectrum of visible light, it is between blue and invisible ultraviolet.…