“I kept telling him it was okay. He tried to trust me. He wanted to trust me. But he already knew what all Black men know: when they are being hunted, their mothers can’t save them.” Here at The Rumpus, Desiree Cooper stands witness to the criminalization of innocent Black boys and men like her son.
For The Walrus, Sarah Musgrave finds a new way to travel in these times and becomes transfixed by Roman webcams.
At Catapult, a lapse in medication causes direct conflict between Shira Erlichman’s bipolar disorder and her work as a nanny.
“To assimilate was to become black, and to become black, well, that was unimaginable.” Coming to the US, Mohamed Abdulkadir Ali goes from Somalian to Black and takes on the anxieties that come with that classification, over at the New York Review of Books.
Back The Rumpus, Amanda Montei takes a look at the narratives a new mother builds for her child.
Jaclyn Moyer’s social distancing includes ants and a Beatles song, over at Guernica.
Kelana Celine Johnson finds space to write and dream in Italy, over at midnight & indigo.
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Logo art by Max Winter.