Category / 2019 / Fall 2019 / Fall 2019 Non Fiction / Nonfiction

What is a Hero? What does it mean to be truly brave or to show real courage? According to a famous John Wayne quote “Courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyway.”  I have often wondered if an act of bravery demonstrated by a person with a complete absence of fear, is truly an…

I always vowed to myself that I would never take them, those pills tucked away in a maroon bag. I left them in the farthest corner of a dusty unused drawer. As long as they were out of sight, they were out of my mind as a viable option. I’m strong enough, I told myself…

You taught me I am my most beautiful self in the first light of morning sun. You taught me the words of Roy, Gibran, Lahiri. You taught me orchids need bright, indirect sunlight with an ice cube dropped in the soil each week. You taught me when I missed you, I should look to the…

The first time I saw CF, he was in bed. It was shortly after my 3 p.m. swing shift start, and the com log notes warned me that this new guy was having severe withdrawal symptoms. I popped my head into the room, briefly introduced myself and asked how he was doing. “I’m sick,” he…

Staring over the rim of the gorge, my only thought was, Well this sucks. Twenty assorted Boy Scouts mulled around, checking each other’s gear, tightening ropes on backpacks, and filling bottles and mouths with water. My borrowed backpack was already slung over my shoulders and buckled tightly in some very uncomfortable places. Every time I…

Lucy would stick her long, blonde nose as close to our own noses as possible without touching, and stare straight into us from her own deep, black eyes.  After a few short sniffs, she would nudge her head toward us, encouraging us to pet her soft head. When we finally acquiesced, and were sufficiently distracted,…

Julian Humes, a black man from Durham, North Carolina, was in sixth grade when he first thought about the implications of being involved with someone of another race. That was when Julian, now 22, told his father that a white classmate had a crush on him. “The first thing he said was, ‘That’s nice and…