The school bus lurks down the street from Brandon and Lakeisha Williams’ second-floor apartment. In the darkness before dawn, its amber lights pop off and on, off and on, off and on. In a few minutes, it will be pickup time. The bus will lumber forward to the apartment entrance. Brandon and Lakeisha will trot …
Income inequality has become one of the defining social issues of our time — at the forefront of the 2016 presidential race, addressed by Pope Francis, studied by academics and journalists alike. I spent six months examining how income inequality and economic segregation play out in Houston — a city that is at once full …
I am Latina 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. My identity doesn’t fit in a 30-day window designated by the government. It’s not something I can discard when convenient, or don on special occasions. It is who I am. It is an identity that fills me with pride, creates …
Some people you never forget. They stay with you long after the interview is over and your notebook is closed. Petra Guillen is one of those people. This is a story I wrote about the impact of gentrification on her family, and an essay I wrote later about her. _________________________________________ Change crept across North Saint …
On a sultry Wednesday evening, Annise Parker stands in front of the Corinthian columns of her lemon-yellow house, clutching a retractable leash. She is gently coaxing Kitsune, a tiny grass-phobic Shiba Inu, to linger on the lawn a few minutes longer. Canine therapy, she explains. It’s been a busy day, following a hectic trip to …
These stories were part of a yearlong look at the growing immigrant community. About one in four residents of the Greater Houston were born in another country and they are changing the city. I spent time immersed in the communities and found stories of people who came from all corners of the world. Part 1: …
It was the exclamation point that got me. There, in the last paragraph of the flyer stuffed into my front door by a local lawn service trolling for new business. There, amid the grammatical errors, misplaced apostrophes and random capitalization. There, at the end of a phrase that left me simultaneously ice cold and boiling …
Back then, in the time of guerrilleros and civil war, of scampering barefoot and washing clothes by the river, she couldn’t have told you what Houston was. Back then, in her child’s mind, it was just another name for the United States. A dot on a map. A portal to a different world, 1,200 miles …
I’ve been writing about the Houston Mass Murders since 2008, when I started to do stories about the efforts to identify victims of Dean Corll, Elmer Wayne Henley and David Owen Brooks who tortured and killed at least 29 young boys in the 1970s. The stories of the murders were heartbreaking and gruesome, but the …
Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s childhood in Laredo, Texas, was one of art and poetry and music, where Mexican boleros and the words of Octavio Paz filled the house. Spanish was the language of home, and the border separating the town from its Mexican sister city of Nuevo Laredo was a fluid concept. It was also a time of devouring movies — visits …
They never know when the travelers will arrive or if they will show up at all. So, eyes trained on the traffic along Main Street, bodies poised to leap up and run out, they wait. This Wednesday was no different. It was already past noon. Kathie Gallagher, Charlotte Bilderback and Carolyn King had been peering …
The school parking lot was filled with battered and bleeding bodies, screams of anger and pain, shattered windshields and shards of glass. The tears, at first feigned, soon became real as students realized that the accident scene, which had been staged as part of the “Shattered Dreams” program designed to educate students about the dangers …
Just five years ago, Chawanakee USD, a small rural district nestled in the foothills of the Sierra Mountains in northern California, and the North Kansas City School District, a suburban district located just north of Kansas City, Mo., were at the starting lines of the digital revolution. The two districts were about to launch 1-to-1 …
WACO – The frigid wind announced itself as a low, hoarse howl, a freight train rumbling toward the bodies huddled on concrete and frozen grass. It lashed through flimsy blankets and sleeping bags, leaving the kids from Atascocita, Summer Creek and Kingwood groaning. Some whimpered in their sleep. Others squeezed three and four to a …
These are some images from a “poverty simulation” weekend in Waco. Run by the urban ministry Mission Waco, the weekend is meant to give participants greater empathy for the poor and the homeless — and to inspire them to go out and take action. By the end of the weekend, we were bruised and battered …