I couldn’t stop my head from cocking to the left for a moment when my grandmother, while watching John Wayne on the television, said that the Old West should have sunk for all the lead he fired into the ground. And it is probably true, given just how many black-hatted ne’er-do-wells would outlive their ninety […]

That’s what my grandmother told me while we were waiting             at the doctor’s office. The socialist, my great-grandfather, built with his bare hands the house              I have lived in my entire life. I was taken aback was not expecting this kind of history              from my own family. For days I pressed my […]

[This essay is a winner of an essay contest held by Left Hook and sponsored by Monthly Review. — Ed.] I spent three of my formative years working for McDonald’s.  As if that were not bad enough, it was a tiny, cramped little store, tucked inside of a Wal-Mart.  If simply living in America is […]