By Sam Quinones
About three weeks before the start of my senior year in high school, I needed a job that I could quit easily when school began. I was 17. I went down to Tropical Ice Cream.
A pasty-faced man with gray hair met me at the door. I think his name was Ed.
Nineteen, I told him. He asked for my driver’s license. Simple math would have told him my true age. You’re hired, he said.
by Sylvia Castañeda
Luz returned from a trip to Santa Paula to find her home on Columbia Street empty. Her family had vanished. Her husband was gone. Frantic, Luz went door to door, inquiring with neighbors. She spent days searching. A neighbor informed her that Lupe had fled to his native Mazatlán, Sinaloa. She went there. Back then, it was a trip that took many days. But in Mazatlán she found nothing.
by Jian Huang
Nobody here understands what I say. They just look at me funny when I ask them which way is home. At school, the kids sing songs that sound like they could be Chinese. I try to sing along, but I can’t make out the words. Then Mrs. Wintersmith gets mad at me because I don’t participate. I want to participate. I want to tell her I want to participate
By Richard Gatica
In some prisons it’s not easy to pass an item from one cell to the next. If our cell door is too low to pass anything, or the cell we want to pass to is above or below us – in those cases, we fish – which is what I was about to do with Manny.
By CJ Salgado
When I was a little boy growing up in East L.A., my father kept a toolbox. It was at the very back of the garage, covered by a blanket, piece of cardboard, or shop towel at the end of each day to hide it from any would-be-burglars. That was my job, to cover it.
