Issue 510 | The Sun Magazine

June 2018

Readers Write

Odd One Out

A frustrated virgin, a thwarted athlete, a female firefighter

By Our Readers
One Nation, Indivisible

June 2018

Featuring Michelle Alexander, Reverend Lynice Pinkard, Akhim Yuseff Cabey, and more.

The Dog-Eared Page

From Slavery To Freedom

The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness. Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever. It was heard in every sound, and seen in every thing. It was ever present to torment me with a sense of my wretched condition.

By Frederick Douglass
Quotations

Sunbeams

It was the last day of school, and I was walking with my dad. . . . Suddenly, he paused, looked at me intently, and said, “Son, you’re a black male, and that’s two strikes against you.” To the general public, anything that I did would be perceived as malicious and deserving of severe punishment, and I had to govern myself accordingly. I was seven years old.

Robert Stephens

The Sun Interview

Poetic Justice

Camille T. Dungy On Racism, Writing, And Radical Empathy

If you say to me, “I don’t see race when I see you,” that means you’ve just erased a large piece of my experience and identity. That’s a type of violence.

By Airica Parker
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

The Feminist Club

We experience two kinds of violence: the violence done to us by others, and the violence we do to ourselves. The latter hurts more, because it’s of our own making.

By Maggie Cheatham
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

What I Heard

You do not have cramps. That’s invented by women who want attention. We don’t go in for that kind of malingering — that’s what it is. You have cramps because you eat too fast. You don’t chew.

By Heather Sellers
Fiction

Took Us All Like We Was His

Before we was married, we rented a little townhouse in Dallas. My girls was with us. They from my first marriage. Nate come to us when my baby girl was barely a year old. He latched on and took us all like we was his, and I didn’t see all the love in that.

By LaToya Watkins