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Hidden Gems of Chicago – Jackson Park Highlands District
Tucked into the South Shore area like a well-kept secret with good manners, the Jackson Park Highlands District is one of those neighborhoods that makes you slow your car down. Not because you’re lost — because you’re looking. Developed in the early 1900s, it was designed as an upper-middle-class enclave. Tree-lined streets. Curving boulevards. Large…
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Losing My Brother: A Soliloquy
November — He was missing. Missing is a strange word. It sounds temporary. Like misplaced keys. Like a sock behind the dryer. It suggests retrieval. Resolution. But this was different. Received a call telling me that he was missing. Sending my son to the police station to file a missing person report. Asking friends on…
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The Life I Planned at Eight
As I lay in bed contemplating my existence, a random thought floated into my mind: did I ever actually want to get married, or was that desire planted there by society? When I was a little girl, I had big plans for myself. I wanted to be a lawyer—specifically a prosecuting attorney—so I could lock…
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What is Feminism?
Feminism is the radical, sometimes inconvenient idea that women are fully human—with minds of their own, bodies that belong to them, and lives that are not side quests in someone else’s story. Feminism is about autonomy. At its core, feminism says women deserve political, economic, social, and personal equality. Not favors. Not protection. Not pedestal…
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Adults
Grown folks will stomp your spirit down to the bone if you let them. Adults come loaded with agendas, unhealed wounds, power plays, side-eyes, and opinions they swear are facts but don’t know their asses from a hole in the wall. Everybody wants something. Everybody’s dumb and proud of it. I’m tired of their dirty…
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The Book Collector
A couple of months ago, I came to the conclusion that as long as I am alive, I am going to buy books. I am a prolific reader. I love books—the smell of a new one, the quiet promise in its untouched pages. I love pulling an old book from a shelf and finding phone…
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Not All Men—Just These Ones
I really try my best not to man-bash, but mercy has its limits. Harder than a pimp’s heart, yes—and just as guarded. I don’t carry this irritation into my real life. The men I know in flesh and breath can look you in the eye, hold a thought, and say something with weight. They exist…
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Access Is Not a Right.
Remember earlier this year when folks were losing their ever-loving minds over a statue of a Black woman in New York because she was “fat”? This nonsense popped off not long after the president’s inauguration—right when certain people were feeling themselves a little too hard and decided trolling Black spaces online was a personality trait.…

