Legacies
After the Family Cabin Burned
But there was also the feeling of home, and these feelings shiver still in my core.
My Father Taught Me to Pursue Excellence. Coffee Taught Me About Satisfaction.
An obsession with excellence creates an unfortunate binary: all or nothing.
I Rediscovered Who My Grandfather Was by Reading His Book
To know him beyond the frail, serious man who struggled to speak to his family was such a rare and incredible gift.
From Sicily, With Love
My father never took me to Sicily himself, and I yearned to go. I yearned to know the people he knew—and one person he’d never met.
Longing for the Magic of My Childhood Home
Frarieville was the safe space on which I could plant my flag.
Searching for Home in the South with Carson McCullers
Quietly, I clung to what I knew: how to be an outsider in the South.
Seeing Cuba from a Parking Lot in Miami
I used to think Miami was a kind of carbon copy of Havana. But I was wrong. We are not a copy, but a conversation.
In the Shadow of Saris: Exploring Identity Through Memory and Dislocation
Only after I left a home where there were many women who might have helped me did I realize the sari represented more than a cultural announcement.
Little Girl, Big Dinosaur Costume
Fashion is about more than looking good, or feeling comfortable—it’s about how your clothes tell your story.
What Is Left, What Is Held, What Is Grown As Roots
Always the most vulnerable will die. There will be others, too, but it begins there. And we see, in slow moving real time, whose life is valued, whose life is not.