Finally, I felt like a man, and it was a great feeling. I was putting food on the table, I was paying my mother’s medical bills, I was educating my sister, we had a roof over our heads, we had decent clothes on our backs, all thanks to me. For what seemed like the first […]

If there had been a word that would have described my son, then anger would have been it. He was angry all the time, angry at everyone and everything, angry at how I dressed, angry at what I watched, angry with his siblings, angry at the community, angry that we weren’t devout enough-angry, angry, angry. […]

Revenge; I fell asleep thinking of revenge, I dreamt of revenge, I woke up thinking of revenge, I breathed revenge, I walked revenge, I talked revenge. I had vowed to get my revenge for all the suffering that I had incurred in the hands of the police.    I had often wondered what drove one […]

I know all about stigma. It is what happens when you are judged over and over for circumstances you do not control. I know all about being ostracized, my family suffered stigmatization and ostracization all over my father’s wrongful arrest and it changed the course of our lives for good.   We will never know […]