Essay
Why I Started a Book Club in the Harris County Jail
A Chain Reaction
Luby’s is in trouble. Can the iconic cafeteria chain endure?
A Chain Reaction Luby’s is in trouble. Can the iconic cafeteria chain endure? * by Andrea Valdez November 25, 2019 A boilerplate business news headline trigge...Read More
Having My Period in Prison Was Awful. In Texas, That May Finally Change.
When I was locked up, I often had to go without tampons or pads. A new law ensures that the 12,500 women still behind bars won’t have to.
“Does the commissary have any more tampons?” My bunkie shook her head. “I already asked when I went by there.” I panicked. “What are we gonna do? I’...Read More
Up From the Desert
As a child, I hunted for fossils in the Chihuahuan Desert beyond my backyard. Those afternoons shaped the way I think about my fronteriza identity today.
I spent many childhood afternoons searching for sea fossils in the Chihuahuan Desert, finding geologic history strewn throughout the brown and dusty land. My ne...Read More
To Understand the El Paso Massacre, Look to the Long Legacy of Anti-Mexican Violence at the Border
The El Paso shooter wasn’t a “lone wolf.” His act of white supremacist terror is part of a century of racial violence targeting fronterizo communities.
In the immediate aftermath of the El Paso shooting—the largest massacre of Latinx people in the history of the United States—politicians of all stripes stoo...Read More
Lost in Limbo in the Hays County Jail
For 45 painful, lonely days, I waited and waited to be convicted of a crime.
The cold bit through the thin wool blanket and climbed up the short sleeves of my Women of the World Poetry Slam T-shirt as I lay on the cement floor of the Hay...Read More
The Trouble with Yoga
Why yoga studios are the new country clubs.
It was a sunny Wednesday afternoon in south College Station when I arrived for yoga class, like I had on any other Wednesday for the past three years. After bat...Read More
Heads in the Mud
A year after Hurricane Harvey, what has the Bayou City learned?
“The people of Houston and their officials will have to decide whether they are building a great city or merely a great population.” These words, from a 192...Read More
The Day the Windows Shook
Grappling with the damage wrought by the Texas City disaster, more than 70 years later.
We were all gathered in the auditorium of Beaumont’s Millard Elementary School when the windows began rattling, a strong enough vibration that 71 years later ...Read More
Women’s Work
Lessons from my great-aunt, an East Texas original.
Women’s Work Lessons from my great-aunt, an East Texas original. I was a child in a magical place, in a house my father built in the piney woods of East T...Read More
