• Reconnecting with My Mother Tongue

  by Anonymous

  “What are your classes this year?” my mom asked in Mandarin, a few weeks before 9th grade started.  I showed her my schedule and told her I had biology, one of my favorite science classes. “What is that?”  “It’s.. It’s like a class where you study animals,” I explained in a mix of Mandarin and English.

• Listening to Love

  by Anonymous

  I realized I was unique when I was 4. Everyone else in pre-school had two ears, while I had a left ear and a tiny bump on the right side. I didn’t understand why my mom carefully brushed my long hair to hide the little bump.

• Housing Stability Changed My Life

  by Rose Perna

  My mom, my six siblings, and I moved into a homeless shelter in Brooklyn in February 2021. It was a shelter for families with children, and the apartment they put us in was horrible. The walls had graffiti and mold on them, the floors looked like they’d never been cleaned, and you could hear rats scratching and squeaking inside the walls. 

• Reunion Is Only the Beginning

  by Anonymous

  The cold and quiet Bangladesh airport filled with my loud cries as I was taken away from my loving mom’s arms and placed into those of a tense and muscular man. I was 4 years old, and his arms felt unfamiliar even though he was my dad.

• Proud Parents of This Great Kid

  by Kai Arrowood

  My mom called me to dinner. I swallowed thickly and emerged from my room, faintly practicing the lines I had prepared. It was the winter of 8th grade, and Christmas music was playing. Feeling light in my chair, as though I was going to fall out of it, I cleared my throat and told my family, “I have something to say.”

• Face to Face With Grief

  by Sonia Fung

  I heard my mom talking on the phone to my uncle, her brother. Her voice was quiet, a cracked whisper I had never heard her use. “When?”   Then she turned to me and switched to Cantonese: “Mommy died. She died last night.