That’s the thing about addiction. It hides in plain sight, promising to quit. At first it itches, and then it hurts a little, but then it just becomes who you are.
(nonfiction)
Category: Nonfiction
…and while I care about respect, it isn’t my driving force, my raison d’etre, and I most certainly don’t fight police (or anyone for that matter), and in the end understand that while I am Latin, I am Hispanic, I do love Mexican music and even my dad, I formed my own sense of identity because I had to or I would have gone crazy; and perhaps, maybe, possibly, I did for a while.
(nonfiction)
Has our attempt at diplomacy boiled down to arms shipments alone? We, like the Ukrainians, just want to raise our children, and have prosperity without greed.
(nonfiction)
The third place winner of ACM’s second nonfiction contest, and part of our series of pieces inspired by the Democratic Party’s 2024 platform.
This woman, with her light touch, the woman at the clinic who held my hand during the procedure, the clinic staff, and the women who shared their stories, have given me something I seldom encountered before in life—kindness without expectation or judgment.
The winner of ACM’s second nonfiction contest:
Another way to think about a porch: as a threshold – a space one passes through on their way somewhere else, a waiting place, between in and out.
Even when a partner tells me they like or love my parts, I’m too entrenched in shame about my labia to believe I could be desirable.
(nonfiction)
I was stunned. Sitting there staring at them, I could not believe their power—that they could make the debt, the beast, vanish in the blink of an eye.
(nonfiction)
Your body must not have been listening to the positive mantras. It doesn’t have a clue what to do when the time comes.
(nonfiction)
My sister wrapped her arms around me. I did not cry. I felt nothing.
(nonfiction)
I’d assumed I’d share my story with him over a beer when he was in his late twenties. A fun anecdote not a cautionary tale.
(nonfiction)
I have stories and photographs to remind me. But the rest is scattered like the 509th on that beach.
(nonfiction)
The summer heat sprawls on my skin like a thick cover of wet glue.
(nonfiction)
To be seen was to be ashamed and to admit to experiencing pleasure was to be disgusting.
(nonfiction)
By reflex I turned to leave, but in the center of the open doorway stood the silhouette of a second man, holding a pitchfork across his waist as if to block my path.
(nonfiction)
Kafka can sit for hours on the corner of the balcony, the elbow, looking down on the busy intersection. On one corner, across from us is the Escher House, a three-story mansion now converted into cheap rooms.
(nonfiction)
…the promise of fulfillment rather than just a hole here or there or in several places at once…
(nonfiction)
Does literary fame play a role in your quest as a writer and if so, does it play a positive role, or a negative one?
(nonfiction)
Do you need to be a good person in order to be a great poet?
(nonfiction)
The work is not going well. Why is the work not going well? I think. Wait. I ran out of medication.
(nonfiction)
My parents had always had a copy of Kaddish, which my mother urged us to read, but refused to really discuss the book.
(nonfiction)
The winner of ACM’s inaugural Nonfiction Contest
My mother tells me stories about when she was little and then makes me promise not to tell anyone.
(nonfiction)
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new books
“My real education during my DePaul years occurred on Monday nights at a jazz club called Orphans…”
“It felt good to be in their brainy female world, which defied the patriarchal Latin culture under Franco.”
(nonfiction)
There’s joy on Easter, and that joy lasts a long time. And Lent, it’s not about food, it’s about self-sacrifice, humbling yourself before God. You’re saying, You’re the big guy. I’m the small guy.
It doesn’t matter which language you speak, because language does not influence your way of thinking.
When my family was escaping, my great grandmother saw that all of the grain that was collected from them was being thrown in the sea.
The older generation of course, they didn’t teach their kids about the horrors of Stalin, because they didn’t want them to have that memory.
(Dispatches from Ukraine)
Now I remember it like a dream, but it was terrible.
(Dispatches from Ukraine)
The rage rolls out of my gut like a stream of regurgitated frogs, leaving me purged and primed for violence.
(nonfiction)
This is the first piece in our new DEBUT section, which showcases the first literary work published by a writer, beyond a campus-only magazine.
“There were no pens allowed at Carrollton Springs because of the possibility of someone hurting themselves with one”
(nonfiction)
Another Chicago Magazine 