Tamuira Reid is a writer and educator living in New York City. Her first feature-length screenplay, Luna’s Highway, was recently optioned by Cynthia Phillips & Co. (San Francisco/Los Angeles). The script earned her a 2010 Finalist placement in Francis Ford Coppola’s American Zoetrope Screenwriting Competition and a 2010 Semifinalist placement in The Nicholls Screenwriting Fellowship Competition, sponsored by The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. Tamuira taught screenwriting as a guest faculty member at the Global Social Change Film Festival and Institute in 2011, in Bali, Indonesia, and again in 2012 in New Orleans. Currently, she teaches writing full-time in NYU’s Global Liberal Studies Program. She is now beginning work on a book-length collection of essays on single parenting in NYC.
by Tamuira Reid I asked 6th, 7th and 8th grade NYC public school students – ranging in age from 11-14 – if they had any thoughts on the upcoming Presidential election. Here is what they had to say. Kamala for President. She cares more about poor people and mothers and Americans who are really struggling,…
by Tamuira Reid The last time I see Sam she’s sitting at the vanity in her bedroom, carefully examining her 16 year-old face in its lighted mirror. Ugh, she sighs, wiping away the lip pencil I just watched her carefully apply for over the better part of an hour. This color, what is it? Hot-rod…
by Tamuira Reid Gordon, 74, Crown Heights, Retired Vet and Woodworker I saw my best friend, my platoon mate in Nam, get his entire head blown off right in front of me. The whole thing. Nothing left from the neck up. A soldier, a kid really, suddenly without a head. It was there and then…
by Tamuira Reid School Boards across the country have become radicalized, energized, weaponized. They have become the new political battleground where extremist right-wing ideologues test the political waters. The plan is to infiltrate the schools, use them as the megaphone to broadcast the GOP’s agenda, with lots of soapboxing and grandstanding thrown in. Last week,…
by Tamuira Reid “A past abortion experience, whether it took place one month ago or decades ago, can be at the root of a range of issues — low self-esteem, relationship problems, disenfranchised grief a slow burn. It doesn’t affect you until later on. [Many] women have had an abortion, but you think you’re alone.…
by Tamuira Reid Guns guns guns on the news nothing new here comes the Blue. Guns guns guns where we sleep where we eat beneath our feet. Guns guns guns where we pray where we play get outta the way. —Oliver, Brooklyn, New York (11 years-old) 1. There are more guns than people in the…
by Tamuira Reid The left is now rationing life-saving therapeutics based on race, discriminating against and denigrating, just denigrating white people to determine who lives and who dies. In fact, in New York state, if you’re white, you have to go to the back of the line to get medical help. If you’re white, you…
by Tamuira Reid He’s easy to spot. Signature knee-length yellow raincoat, with a stenciled peace sign on the back of it, that he wears irregardless of the weather. Army green cargo shorts with wrappers erupting from every pocket. White sneakers with orthopedic inserts to help him manage his slippery gait. The Roblox backpack from two…
by Tamuira Reid I. I lost my father in August 2017. My son lost his a year later. I’ve always hated summer. Maybe because I was born on a cold January morning and I’ve got winter running through my blood. Maybe because the warm days always felt suffocating to me, in their endlessness. Maybe because…
by Tamuira Reid This is my son, Ollie. This photo was taken five years ago. It’s one of my all-time favorites because of the look of absolute pride on his face. Hard-earned pride. I realize that pre-k graduation isn’t the most celebrated of milestones for a lot of families, but for us it was huge;…
by Tamuira Reid It is almost midnight here in New York City, and I’ve been sitting at my dining room table for the past eight hours with my finger on the “send” button. Each time, I freeze, regroup, take another sip of coffee, sneak a cigarette out on the fire escape where my son won’t…
by Tamuira Reid Hold your tongue. When the voice on the phone tells you how much they all loved her. That her smile could light up a room. The only time you ever saw her smile was the day after your sixteenth birthday, when you left your childhood home to leave your childhood behind. The…
by Tamuira Reid Go to where the trees are. This is what the voice was saying. My voice. My real voice. Not the borrowed ones, the kind I try on for size when I can’t find my own, voices I can hide behind. Not those. My real voice likes to shoot from the gut, likes…
by Tamuira Reid Mom, why are we always at the doctor? Every week we come here. Are you dying? No, baby. Why are we always here then? If you grow-up in NYC with a single mom at the helm, then you grow-up in waiting rooms. And every kid knows what waiting rooms really are: babysitters.…
by Tamuira Reid The apartment in West Harlem, five buildings down on the left. The apartment just past the pawn shop, across from the Rite-Aid, parallel to the barber’s where all the pretty boys hangout waiting to get a Friday night shave. The apartment past the deli were you get cheese and pickle sandwiches and…
by Tamuira Reid Nadia was missing. She had been missing for three days. Three days, two hours, six minutes. Each time a pair of feet clunked up the stairs, a set of keys jangled, someone coughed, laughed, sighed, or took a piss I’d push the door open a crack, still bolted, because it’s New York,…
by Tamuira Reid I met Arnie at a Cocaine Anonymous meeting the year before I got sober for the first time. I was high as fuck, eyes lit and hands fidgeting in my lap, then my jacket pockets, then my lap again. Maybe I thought being in a room full of non-high people would help…
by Tamuira Reid When the father of your child is in jail, pray even if you don’t believe in God. Pray even though in your head of heads you know it won’t do shit. Stop staring at the walls, at the clock, at the phone. At your baby, now eight, sleeping next to you, his…
by Tamuira Reid It’s nearing lunchtime when I make it over to Kevin’s, and beautiful out, but his window shades are still drawn closed, outside light on. I notice the porch slopes ever so slightly to the right, where a few forgotten footballs and beer bottles have now collected. I knock. Wait. Hear some movement…
by Tamuira Reid Fog fills a dead, gray street. As it begins to part, an opulent, borderline gaudy building glows from within. Like the Taj Mahal has plopped down on this small, sleepy town. In the front window I can see *Leah, looking out. A large neon sign, Open For Business, clicks on next to…