Detroiters are Talking. Listen to Them.

It is satisfying and terrifying seeing so much of Detroit outside Detroit these days. Detroiters on the small screen, the Comedy Central series about, well, Detroiters, coupled with Detroit, the much-debated Kathryn Bigelow flick meant to inspire conversation about police brutality through a 50-year-old lesson learned during our riots.

2017-11-06T23:40:38-05:00October 16, 2017|

When Ruby Jones Was Here

Excerpted from The Detroit Neighborhood Guidebook, coming in August from Belt Publishing. By Lakisha Dumas When Ruby Jones was here, Detroit was [...]

2017-07-10T16:46:09-04:00July 10, 2017|

Our Bungalow on Braile

More than anything, my dad talks about the trees. How branches reached up and intertwined over the street to block out the sun. Turned the street into a tunnel. You couldn’t see the sky. Same thing on every block he and his four younger brothers would have walked. Trees taller than all the Warrendale bungalows.

2017-06-22T12:42:32-04:00June 22, 2017|

The Ecology of Ruin

As a grad student in ecology, I spent a lot of time in the woods with a camera for company. I was living in upstate New York, studying how plants recolonize forests growing up on old fields, and why some return faster than others.

2016-09-26T10:01:26-04:00September 26, 2016|