Jun 04
What does “It Takes a Village to Raise a Child” mean to you? What I know first-hand about childhood is that mine didn’t happen in a nurturing environment, so I sought and received approval and support from the loving parents of my childhood friends. They were, and still are, my village. It doesn’t take an …
Jun 04
“First, I think girls’ education may be the single most cost-effective kind of aid work. It’s cheap, it opens minds, it gives girls new career opportunities and ways to generate cash, it leads them to have fewer children and invest more in those children, and it tends to bring women from the shadows into the …
Jun 03
“Are you a spy?” My supervising attorney asked me this when I was volunteering in the Pima County Superior Court. I told him I came here to study law, the field of which has been regarded as the realm of the elites in this society. Obviously, he could not figure out why I, a foreigner …
May 29
In an appearance at the Washington, D.C., Politics and Prose bookstore, Ehrenreich informed an adoring audience that previous attempts she’d made to pitch books about poverty to magazine and book editors had most commonly met with failure. Poverty wasn’t interesting to their readers, the editors had told her. This book, she said, was different; it …
May 28
In nearly every picture from my childhood I am wearing ballet leotards or a tutu, mostly because I studied ballet as a child, but also because I identified with the ballerina. It was my “girl” thing, and the ballerina represented the woman I wanted to become. My brother always appears wearing a baseball cap or …
Apr 12
Have you ever heard of the school to prison pipeline? It’s likely you haven’t. Because it’s not something that receives a lot of publicity outside of the areas it affects. But it should. Which is why I decided to write this article today. I want to shine some light on something I believe is a …
Apr 04
According to a report conducted by the Coalition of the Homeless last month, a record high 50,000 people slept in New York City’s shelters this January. Fifty-thousand people. More people are now homeless in New York City than at any time since the Great Depression. Want to know an even scarier fact? Almost half of …
Mar 21
I’m just going to start off with the disclaimer: I love the movie The Pursuit of Happyness. I really do. However, I have one major objection to the film, which I would like to discuss with you. For those of you who haven’t seen the movie, here’s the SparkNotes version: A man named Chris Gardner …
Mar 07
There is no doubt that that the mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., has heightened the political debate on gun control in the United States. The Obama-backed gun bills are considered a long shot in Congress. This is due to the opposing views on gun control in congress. One group in Congress is standing behind the …
Mar 05
In Palestine, there is a city by the name of Jenin located in the West Bank. A majority of the city’s population is made up of Palestinian refugees displaced from their homes. Thousands of young children, teenagers, and college age youth grow up within the walls of this refugee city, and the future they look …
