Lost and Gain
An excerpt from "Life Sentences: Writings from Inside an American Prison."
Between Old House and New
Coming to terms with a complicated family legacy on an Illinois farm.
Returning to Pittsburgh
"For all the intervening years, Pittsburgh had lived in my memory...viewable but not touchable, sequestered behind a one-way mirror of time."
A Love Letter to Dayton
"When I became editor-in-chief of the city’s alt weekly, Dayton City Paper, it became my job to know Dayton intimately."
Power and Possibility in Dayton’s Oregon District
An elegy for a wounded place.
Rebel Girl of West Ridge
From the Chicago Neighborhood Guidebook.
The Summer We Went to the Moon
That summer, my parents and I were arguing about God.
The Packard Presence in Columbus
Walking around Columbus, Ohio, the influence of Frank Packard's architecture is everywhere you look.
Cadillac Hill
"Almost every girl I know has the same story about a car, about a boy. This is mine."
Traveling While Black
Learning the racial geography of Indiana as a young Black girl in the 1980s.
Eight Gardens
On family, community, and gardening as social practice.
The End of a World as I Knew It
On childhood summers at a black enclave in Michigan, and the moment everything changed.