Trump shamed with Father’s Day protest for tearing apart immigrant families

I’d explode. I’d be a stick of walking dynamite. I’d want to kill until he was in my arms again. I never felt murderous rage until I realized my child co

Life in the Balance

I left the hospital,” she said in jagged breaths. An hour earlier, my girlfriend texted me that she slipped and cut her hand. Friends rushed her to an emergency room but she left before treatment. I was confused and angry. “Why are you walking home in pain,” I asked her. “I. Can’t. Afford. Another. Bill,” …

How to Topple a Wall with a Heartbeat

"He won with a metaphor.” I pressed my hands against the air as if touching a surface. “He won with the image of a wall.” They looked at me, waiting for words to strike like a flint on reality, to spark a flash and make everything briefly visible. “We’re scared.” I walked to the stage’s …

The Mourning After Waking Up in Trump’s America

The blue morning painted my bedroom into a dark ocean. I was at the bottom of it. Sunken by fears that moved through shadows like cold currents. Drawing breath was work. Lifting my head was hard labor. I reached for my phone, typed in “NY Times.” The previous night, I met friends at a bar …

Pain is Pain

"You’re not listening to me.” He gripped the steering wheel. “What the hell am I not hearing?” I stared at my friend Terrence, who stared at the road as we drove in silence. He blurted, “White guys feel like they’re always wrong. I’m white. Listen to me. I know. We’re being yelled at by everyone.” …

Trump’s Rape Rhetoric Appeals to Male Anxiety

Donald Trump has made sexual assault a core motif of his campaign rhetoric, but he's not interested in women's safety. Instead, he exploits rape imagery to tap into our fear even as he promotes social policies that endanger women. The sexual anxiety he calls up in his speeches is part of the conservative tradition that …

To the Racist Assholes Voting for Trump

In the decades since, everywhere you turn there’s a person of color holding a mirror. On TV, we hold up mirrors. In music, in newspapers and in college classes we hold up mirrors. In the riots of Baltimore and Ferguson and in the Black Lives Matters protests, we carry mirrors through the streets. The President, a black man at the highest office of the land, holds up a mirror. And in those many, many reflections, you and everyone can see the bloody grave upon which you built your history.