I’ve always been wary of sports, competition and falling in love. So growing up, I avoided all three. As a kid, I would shrug when “accidentally” letting goals into the net from the opposing team. I would walk slowly behind everyone else on the basketball court as they ran from end to end. My mother…
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Like most first dates, there were uncomfortable moments. Josh was reserved and rarely volunteered information about himself, which meant it was hard to get to know him. And while there was definitely a mutual physical attraction, there was a shyness in Josh that only seemed to fall away with the help of a few drinks.…
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“Cousin, are you sure?” Tiffany asked me. “Aren’t you scared?” I laughed away whatever fear I was carrying and told her I would be back. That it was just for the summer. But Tiffany knew what I couldn’t see yet. That I would find writing and become the woman of my own dreams. I cloaked…
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When we invited readers — as well as renowned writers such as Staceyann Chin, Mahogany Browne and Damon Young — to respond to the question “What is Black love today?” we were moved by the strength, resilience and diversity of the stories they told us. To love, or be loved, while Black in the United…
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A few days before my last day at my job administering a college scholarship program, I’d received an email from someone named Dani. I’d contacted her to make an appointment, but she never showed. On my last day, as I did one final skim through my emails, I stopped at hers again. I zoomed in…
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“I like you,” I told him. “I like you, too,” he replied. “No, I like you, like you,” I said. “OK fool. I know,” he said. We stared at each other for a second before going back to playing with our action figures, until my aunt said it was time for dinner. During the last…
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Not only did he attend school plays, piano recitals, basketball games, track meets, even church once or twice, but he was also the one who would drive me to and from those events. Whenever I copped an attitude, he knew how to put a smile on my face. He would scoop me up and take…
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“Dealmaker? GREAT SMILE! Dealbreaker? BAD TEETH!” When I was 11, and had just moved with my parents to East Lib, Pittsburgh, this brazen stubby white boy started calling me “Beaver” because of my slightly bucked teeth and perpetual overbite, and that nickname stuck. (People who know me from then still know me as “Beav.”) By…
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When Denise Parnell and Whitney Hardy first encountered each other in 2009, it was on a blind date — one that Ms. Parnell was on with a man to whom she had been introduced by friends. To ease the pressure on Ms. Parnell, her friends had arranged for the setup to be part of a…
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In September 2015, Henderson Moore Blumer could sense the panic of fellow art student Suzanne Zoe Joskow. She was in her first year of the M.F.A. program at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles; he in his second. It was that time at the start of the semester when students begin receiving…
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