Finding Hope in Wicker Park’s Mexican Community
Coronavirus has devastated Latino communities in Illinois. But in Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood, one family is working and hoping for a better tomorrow.
The Last Children of Mill Creek [Excerpt]
"My father was the grandson of Mississippi slaves, and the son of a thrice-married and divorced mother who had cleaned white peoples’ homes and cared for their children in two states by the time they settled in St. Louis in 1929."
Stella of Tremont
By the time she was four, my grandmother had survived her first global pandemic. A lifetime later, she is weathering another.
Paper House
"I never would have called it homelessness, if you’d asked."
An Elegy for John Prine
"If you listen long enough, you’ll find your own Prine line, the one that makes you feel real lonesome and want to laugh, all at once."
“No Ordinary Time”
A coronavirus sketchbook, March 2020.
2020 Vision: Cincinnati’s West End
More than twenty-five thousand people lost their homes so a highway could be built in my neighborhood.
Loiterers
A requiem for the small-town "hang-arounds."
Finding Refuge in Southwest Detroit
Since the early twentieth century, the area has been a safe haven for Latinx—including my family.
Game Day at the Ohio Pen
Remembering the Ohio State Penitentiary Hurricanes—and the day my father played against them in 1965.
Richard Hatcher’s Gary
Remembering the life and leadership of one of the first Black mayors of a major American city. [Excerpted from "The Gary Anthology."]
Home Again at the Southside Reunion
In Flint, Michigan, a gathering of the descendants of the men and women who joined the ‘Great Migration.’