An American Journey
For as long as I can remember, I have struggled with fitting my identity into the complex puzzle of race and ethnicity in this country. My mother is from Japan, and I was also born there, though my family moved to the U.S. when I...
A Trail of Ghosts
Note: This piece was part of winning entries in Best of the West (2nd Place) and SPJ Northwest Excellence in Journalist (1st Place). Doan Nguyen was sufficiently “worked up,” as she put it, by the time we reached Nihonmachi (Japantown) Alley, a history-filled thoroughfare in...
Birding While Black with Drew Lanham
Drew Lanham is a different bird. And he’s known that to be the case since, back in the day in Edgefield, South Carolina, he leapt off buildings and trees with cardboard wings, umbrellas and parachutes made of garbage bags. One time he broke his collarbone...
Audubon Helps Green a City Girl
I am by nature a city girl. I enjoy bright lights and long walks down populated concrete sidewalks while street musicians fill the air with tunes. I am from Chicago, land of blues and backyard barbecue smells, where as a child I played double-dutch near...
What If I’m Not White?
During my previous life as a sportswriter, an NBA player once made me wait for an arranged interview while he horsed around with ball boys in front of his locker. After a long spell of this, he grew bored and finally turned to me. “I...
Let’s Lay Some Words to Rest
During a recent Q&A session with a distinguished Black author and speaker, a woman from the South tripped so badly over race-based terms, she barely could spit out her danged question. “ … Black … ah … African-American … ,” she sputtered – and not...