And no family was there to save me
When I was six and my brother was four and a half years old, our mother went to prison for the first time. Two Houston police officers drove a squad car into the parking lot of our small inner-city apartment complex, loose gravel crunching beneath their tires.
The officers did not speak to us. They talked among themselves, laughing and joking. She leaned awkwardly towards the half opened window because of the handcuffs behind her back. My mother was sweating heavily, and her eyes were wild with the magic of whatever drugs she had taken. …
Our mothers and fathers are the punchlines of your jokes
Readers please note: this story includes descriptions of addiction, suicide, and child exploitation. If you need help, contact the National Helpline.
My mother was a crack cocaine addict for more than twenty years. Being her son was a lonely thing. It was not easy. Everyone thought it was a dirty thing. Filthy. Inhuman. Crackhead jokes sound differently when it is your own mother who walks among the ghosts that haunt street corners and lonely parking lots. You laugh at the jokes like everyone else, hoping the laughter will provide you with cover from the shame of it all.
Even as…
I didn’t want to simply have a nice house in a bad neighborhood
I bought a little house a couple of years ago. It sits on a mostly quiet street in a mostly Black subdivision, with a good amount of Latinos. The larger area of Houston, of which my subdivision is a part, is called Sunnyside, and it has a reputation for being a tough neighborhood.
I was born and raised not far away, in an area called South Park. …
The Texas abortion ban takes freedom of religion away from all of us
The new Texas abortion law that all of America is talking about, is nothing more than Texas style religious law. American religious leaders are being allowed to force their religious beliefs on all Americans. This law is yet another attempt by the religious right, and the mostly religious white men who lead it, to turn their religious beliefs into law, just as groups like the Taliban or Isis or Al-Qaeda do. This is our American means of taking away a woman’s rights, and it is far more damaging than the denial of driver’s licenses. …
A follow for a follow: the blogger’s drug deal
Since I joined Medium eight or nine months ago, I’ve always seen hopeful writers on Facebook, Twitter, etc, asking for people to follow them in exchange for them following you. Follow for a follow, the blogger’s drug deal. I’ve even watched videos from more established Medium writers advising new writers and bloggers to employ this tactic to get them more followers and readers.
But the whole point of having followers is to have people who enjoy your writing. People who don’t enjoy your writing, or never even bothered to read it before they gave you a few claps or highlighted…
Besides the chance of winning one of the writing contests
I’ve seen a number of people express concerns about Mediums writing contests. Some have said they won’t be participating in them for reasons ranging from author’s rights to judging criteria for the writing contests. I think it’s a great effort by Medium to use their writing contests as a vehicle to finally reward writers for the quality of their writing.
I found out about Medium about nine or ten months ago. I’d published a few short stories in some literary journals, but never anything that could earn you anything more than the chance to build an audience that would possibly…
Finding a way out — the consequences of $2.13 an hour.
I don’t want to go back to the restaurant industry. There should be something more for us, all of us. Life should hold something more than returning to an industry where you are not valued at all. Where you are just some guy with a plate attached to his arm or a bottle of wine that must be poured into the glass of some asshole who will camp out at your table late into the night, even on Christmas Eve or Christmas day itself, so that they can avoid the torture of having to wash their own dishes at home.
…
School violence and bullying in America
They said she tried to run. Caught. And then she tried begging for the mercy of attackers too young to know the beauty of compassion. She made it home after the beating from the two young girls, but only for a little while. A bruised head turned into complaints of a bad headache. She was taken to the hospital. A couple of days later, at thirteen years old, she was dead.
I first heard about the death of this little girl at work one night. It was a slow night at the restaurant where I worked then, so I escaped…
How Medium burned down the home of its most talented writers
P.S. I Love You, the Medium publication affectionately known as “PSILY,” is gone. After the 30th day of June 2021, they will no longer be accepting new work since Medium has pulled funding from the publication. In pandemic language, this means they have been deemed “non-essential.”
When I first started writing on Medium last year, writers openly dreamed about being published in P.S. I Love You. They still did, until the sad news came. On social media, anxious writers asked how they could get into the publication that focused on matters of the heart. How long do they normally take…
Sexual harassment, toxic masculinity, and misogyny
Six months ago New York governor Andrew Cuomo was being called “America’s governor” by people all over the country for his leadership during the coronavirus pandemic. And then sexual harassment allegations against the New York Democrat came to light. Governor Cuomo became the poster child of toxic masculinity. Americans all over the country had wondered if the allegations were true or not, as Governor Cuomo repeatedly denied the claims by women who have accused him of unwanted kissing and soliciting a former aid to play “strip poker” with him.
And then Charlotte Bennett, a former aide to Governor Cuomo, came…
