She wanted to get at the hate of them all, to pry at it and work at it until she found a little chink, and then pull out a pebble or a stone or a brick and then a part of the wall, and, once started,...

FREEDOM IS THE FRAGILE NECK of a daffodil, after the longest of winters. It's the sound of your voice, without anyone drowning you out. It's having the grace to say yes, and more important, the right...

It is a strange thing, being suddenly motherless. It's like losing a rudder that was keeping me on course, one that I never paid much mind to before now. Who will teach me how to parent, how to deal...

I've come to see that ignorance is a privilege, too.

As it turns out, public defenders are less Superman and more Sisyphus, and there's no small number of lawyers who wind up crushed under the weight of the infinite caseloads and the crappy hours and...

My mother nods toward Violet and her little friend, sprinkling grass over their mud pies. This has been going on so much longer than either of us, Kennedy. From where you stepped in, in your life, it...

I don't want their help," he explodes. "I don't want to be someone who needs their help. I want to be just like everyone else, you know, not a special case.

I got precious little time for you to belong to me. I'm gonna make sure it isn't any shorter than it has to be.

I knew that sometimes when people spoke, it wasn't because they had something important to say. It was because they had a powerful need for someone to listen.

we have to put one foot in front of the other every day and pray it will be better the next time the sun rises.

The best lies are the ones that are wrapped around a core of truth.

One day, you look in the mirror, and see gray hair. One day, you realize there is less of your life left than what you've already lived. And you think, How did this happen so fast? It was only...

You are not an impostor," Sam Hallowell told me. "You are not there because of luck, or because you happened to be in the right place at the right moment, or because someone like me had connections....

There are just some feelings, I've learned, for which we never invented the right words.

That's overcompensating, and that's just as bad," I say. "Your say you don't see color … but that's all you see. You're so hyperaware of it, and trying to look like you aren't prejudiced, you can't...

There's an elderly woman fussing with the top of the cream pitcher, trying to get it open. Her purse sits on the counter, but as I approach, she picks up the handbag and anchors it to her side,...

When I tell people this story, they assume the miracle I am referring to during that long-ago blizzard was the birth of a baby. True, that was astonishing. But that day I witnessed a greater wonder....

You told me this lawsuit isn't about race. But that's what started it. And it doesn't matter if you can convince the jury I'm the reincarnation of Florence Nightingale-you can't take away the fact...

It is amazing how you can look in a mirror your whole life and think you are seeing yourself clearly. And then one day, you peel off a filmy gray layer of hypocrisy, and you realize you've never truly...

There is a fire raging, and we have two choices: we can turn our backs, or we can try to fight it. Yes, talking about racism is hard to do, and yes, we stumble over the words - but we who are white...

Is it better not knowing the ugly truth, and pretending it doesn't exist? Or is it better to confront it, even though the knowledge may be a weight you carry around forever?

How incredibly easy it is to hide behind white skin, I think, looking at these probable supremacists. The benefit of the doubt is in your favor. You're not suspicious. The few black faces in the room...

When it comes to social justice, the role of the white ally is not to be a savior or a fixer. Instead, the role of the ally is to find other white people and talk to make them see that many of the...

On one side of the seesaw is my education. My nursing certification. My twenty years of service at the hospital. My neat little home. My spotless RAV4. My National Honor Society-inductee son. All of...

I smile. But like anything you wear that doesn't fit, it pinches.

She falters, then gather up the weeds of her thoughts and offers me the saddest, truest bouquet.

On the day before classes were supposed to start, Mama took me out to dinner. You're destined to do small great things, she told me. Just like Dr. King said. She was referring to one of her favorite...

the part of the brain, physiologically, that allows us to blame everything on people we do not really know is the same part of the brain that allows us to have compassion for strangers

The whole point of this examination is to make me feel lesser than... but I have spent 20 years seeing how beautiful women are. Not because of how they look, but because of what their bodies can...

I tell them that there is nothing more selfish than trying to change someone's mind because they don't think like you. Just because something is different does not mean it should not be respected.