Posts tagged “chicago”

  1. At a part-time museum job I had in Hyde Park, I cut out a photo from the Chicago Tribune’s daily of Tina Fey and her husband Jeff and thumbtacked it next to Tina Turner and Minnie Mouse on our breakroom wall. Everyone I knew in Chicago loved Tina and some of us pretended she was our friend. The caption under the photo said that she and Jeff went to our museum on their first date. I took…

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  2. This is a love letter to the inner city. This is a love letter to a concept of Chicago that is constantly under attack. This is a love letter to the people in the hood who raised me, sustained me, and supported me. I've been trying to write about Chicago violence for a good two months now. The facts are easy to obtain from any major news source, though the way in which those facts…

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  3. In the summer of 2011, I had two jobs. One was in the Cook County Jail’s drug treatment facility, Division VI; the other was at a summer school on the South Side for Chicago public schools. The similarities were chilling. The inmates of both places were delivered the same bland, partially frozen food: Bologna in tiny tortillas, waxy apples, and milk that had solidified. Go-gurt, for some reason.

    In both cases, the food came…

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