Essay
Heads in the Mud
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
I Grew Up on the Texas-Mexico Border, but Now I Barely Recognize It
In Brownsville, you can't go home again.
It’s a part of the human condition to romanticize your place of origin, to look nostalgically back upon the things you grew up with, and then wistfully shrug ...Read More
Somewhere It Hides a Well
Learning to look past borderland tropes in Presidio.
The photograph, taken in 1975, shows a long dirt road receding into blue mountains. A chain-link fence runs along the left side of the road, and on the right, a...Read More
Drinking the Kool-Aid at the Garden of Eden
Searching for community at a North Texas “ecovillage.”
Searching for community at a North Texas “ecovillage.”...Read More
The Road to Huntsville
My days on "the chain" — the prison bus to Huntsville — are long over, but they're still with me.
My days on "the chain" — the prison bus to Huntsville — are long over, but they're still with me....Read More
The Impossible City
Houston was built on a stubborn defiance of nature. As the city recovers from Hurricane Harvey, that same attitude will be on display — for better or worse.
Houston was built on a stubborn defiance of nature. As the city recovers from Hurricane Harvey, that same attitude will be on display — for better or worse....Read More
Dear Governor Abbott: The ‘Bathroom Bill’ Endangers Trans Texans Like My Son
I’ll tell my son as he gets older that his experience of gender is on the margins of society. But that’s all right; lots of great stuff happens on the margins.
Dear Governor Abbott, Not long ago, my kids and I spent five nights camping in Big Bend. We had a great spot for our little pop-up camper right next to the Rio ...Read More
Protecting Immigrant Families: A Call for an Economic Boycott of Texas
After SB 4, Texans should support immigration and boycott conventions, conferences and major sports events.
The time has come for us Texans to promote an economic boycott of our state until the misnamed “anti-sanctuary” law, Senate Bill 4, is repealed an...Read More