I’m terrified for school kids. The ones who settle down in cozy reading corners and meeting circles. The ones who run rampant and shriek with laughter during lunch periods. The ones who copy math problems off whiteboards, pass up their worksheets and join teams and clubs just to spend more time with their friends. On the morning I make my way to my niece's school program 19 children and two teachers are murdered at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. By the time I find a seat next to my brother in the Helen Street School auditorium, I've heard about the massacre. The kids in front of me play violins, and at least one young girl draws a bow against a cello. I remember being like them, a young student reading music while keeping an eye on my band director. I try to focus on the sounds they make, the...
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Catina Bacote's essays have appeared in anthologies and literary journals, including This Is the Place: Women Writing About Home, Bending Genre: Essays on Creative Nonfiction, Ploughshares, Tin House, Gettysburg Review, Prairie Schooner, Kweli, Gulf Coast, TriQuarterly, the Common, December Magazine, the Offing, and the Southern California Review. She recently received fellowships from the Jerome Foundation and the American Association of University Women. Bacote holds an MFA from the University of Iowa and teaches creative writing at Trinity College.
Catina Bacote; On Being Black and Afraid. Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction 1 August 2023; 25 (2): 86–92. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/fourthgenre.25.2.0086
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