Testing My Anger Management Skills
After spending three weeks at Rikers last year for beating a girl up, I promised myself I would work on controlling my anger so I wouldn’t get in any more fights. For a while, I was managing my anger well. I was walking away from confrontations, going to therapy, and successfully using the strategies I […]
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My Foster Parents Showed My Son and Me How to Feel Safe
I am 19 years old, married with two sons. I am surrounded by love and family. However it was not always like this for me. I am a foster care alumna. I first went into care at 3 and exited for good at 18. When I was in care, I felt I had no one […]
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My Looking-Glass Self
I was anxious on the first day of my first college class, The Individual and Society. It was a sociology class that my adviser had suggested I take. I did not even know what “sociology” meant when I signed up. I certainly did not know that something in that class would make my own life […]
Read MoreVoices From the Archive
Four of the “Central Park Five” were initially sent to the Spofford Juvenile Detention Center, where they participated in a writing workshop run by Youth Communication (the publisher of YouthComm Magazine). Raymond Santana published this poem in our prison newsletter, Spofford Voices, protesting his incarceration and proclaiming his innocence: Time I’m wasting time for a […]
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