Featured Illustration: Dissirama Laba As brown girls, we have to come to the basic understanding (and agreement) that our skin care needs are on a completely different playing field than caucasian skin. Everything about it is different; skin conditions, issues, concerns, and even genetic makeup. Before this one beautiful invention called the smartphone, it was […]
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Featured Image: University of Florida In the driest non-polar desert in the world and in a land just west of the Andes mountains lay dunes of discarded clothes, victims of the fleeting trends of the previous years. It is estimated that 39,000 tons of clothing end up in Chile’s Atacama Desert each year, all discarded […]
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Trigger Warning: Mentions of suicidal thoughts and depression . . . My depression began at the age of twelve. I remember looking up one morning after I had washed my face wishing I were dead. It seemed that a tired dejected little Black girl’s face followed me around. Only her face has now grown into […]
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Featured Image: Mahmoud Abu Zeid Am I lucky I am not American? The guns rattling in my head, The banners, the posters, The Black Lives Matter The kids shaking the country till the government falls to its knees. Am I lucky I am not Yemeni? Constantly fighting the hunger, the pain, the hurt, The […]
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Featured Image: Drew Beamer Pray. Grasp these beads, they are your home For the temple lies within Pray. Sit beneath His feet Your body belongs to Him Terminate her image Her life in your mind Pray. Let the flame protect you Its gift in strength Ancestral intentions Words birthed upon infancy Burdens paralleled in honors […]
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On a dark and cold December night that mystified the looming melancholy stretching its wings over the starry blanket, yellow street lights flogging the obscurity and the silenced sounds hovering over the colony away from the hullaballoo of the old city. Leaning on a chaise lounge next to the foggy glass window particular of winter […]
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I don’t know why I seek validation from the one who only sees me as a number, from the one who reads my name simply as a word with no life attached to it. I don’t know why I seek validation from a society who shushes away cries of change, telling those cries that they’re […]
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Roger Crawford once said, “Being challenged in life is inevitable, being defeated is optional.” From my erstwhile experiences, I have ultimately realized that there will always be incoming challenges ahead of us. These inescapable encounters precisely measure the range of our capabilities and moral values. To effectively prepare for these impending tasks, we primarily need […]
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