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 In the picture her hair is wet and stuck to her face. Her eyes struggle to stay open in the terrible wind and she’s clenching her teeth around a big rubber mouthpiece. One of her bathing suit straps has gone slightly askew, and a splash of sun-freckles cover her chest in constellation…
by Tamuira Reid Because I am quiet. Because you are dying. Because it is night. Because the stars are out. Because fathers die. Because I will miss your hands. Because I will miss Niners games on Sundays. Because we still have more books to read. Because my son doesn’t really know you. Because memories fade.…
by Tamuira Reid Mike and Ingrid, New York City I sleep with her. I sleep next to a box with my wife in it. And I probably always will. I know it sounds crazy and people would shake their heads and give a whole lot of poor Mikes’sif they found out about it but I…
by Tamuira Reid I see him here every night around dusk. Which must mean I’m here every night around dusk. I’m sure I have shit to do upstairs – clean, pay bills, cry – but it’s a hell of a lot less depressing outside. I don’t want to be alone. We’ve never talked or touched…
by Tamuira Reid There is something about the light in Tuscany. That is what I will remember the most. Not the pasta and the prosciutto that made my pants split open, the drop-jaw architecture, the art dripping from the walls of the Uffizi. No. It's all about the light. It's golden and strong and covers…
by Tamuira Reid 1. Theresa killed a man with her car. It wasn't her fault but still. It was dark. The road was long. Oldies played on the radio. The kind of music people dance to when they think no one is watching and there is still that chance of something good happening. He hit…
by Tamuira Reid The day Luna went mad her mother thought, finally. The signs had been there, hanging around at the dinner table, in the bathroom where she ironed her hair. It had waited patiently in the corner of a room, under a chair, in the oven with the bread. Now they wouldn't need to…
by Tamuira Reid I get the call in the middle of night. Calls that come in the middle of the night can never be good. And it isn't. It's about Amy, the voice on the other end says. It's a voice I don't know. Someone who calls himself her friend, a friend of the family.…
by Tamuira Reid According to an article written by Therese J. Bouchard for the site, World of Psychology, there are “8 Ways to Help Your Bipolar Loved One Cope”. 1. Educate yourself. “Education is always the starting point. Because until a spouse or daughter or friend of a manic-depressive understands the illness, it is impossible…
by Tamuira Reid Part of being a parent is being prepared for anything. Natural disasters. Snake bites. Broken limbs. Tiny fingers getting slammed into heavy drawers. Occasionally, though, I find myself caught off-guard. That moment when I realize my Survival Guide for Mothers is missing an important chapter. Case in point: Last week. The walk…
by Tamuira Reid My mother loves the ocean. It sings to her, she says. When we lived in Manteca we didn't have an ocean. The only place you could find water was in the swimming pool. She says if it's not singing than it's telling her stories. She says she sees faces in the waves.…
by Tamuira Reid I. I stopped caring about him sometime between January and May, when the weather changed and the leaves came back. He went on that big white pill and couldn't have aged cheese or avocado and I sat at the table in the kitchen, watching him watch me. The yelling wouldn't stop until…
by Tamuira Reid Recently I was interviewed for a college podcast on the craft of writing. I dread this type of thing, mostly because no matter how hard I try to not sound like a complete asshole, I end-up sounding like one. Write about what you know? I guess. Write everyday? I sure don't, but…
by Tamuira Reid I haven't had a drink in nearly a decade. Still think I should've gone out with more style. I chose beer to be my last drink. It was Corona. I remember because I cut my finger slicing the lime. A decade. That's ten whole years. A lot can happen in ten years.…
by Tamuira Reid Go because you're still holding onto the baby weight even though your baby is four. Because you have nowhere else to go today. Because you're not over him. Go because the depression is eating you alive, from the inside out. Go because you forget what happy feels like. (Go because you know…
by Tamuira Reid It’s a hunch. It’s a diagnosis. It’s a long name that leaves you tongue-tied. It’s being horrified over the fact that PDD sounds more like an STD. It’s blaming yourself. It’s blaming his father. It’s blaming God. It’s watching a “normal” kid at the playground and wishing, for a split second, that…
by Tamuira Reid She calls me in the middle of the night. I call her when I know she won't be home. “How many floors are in your building?” “What? Mom, I'm sleeping.” “Tell me how many floors!” “I don't know. Five? Six?” “Okay good. As long as it's not a high rise. You know,…
by Tamuira Reid “The world can't just fucking stop. It's ridiculous. We need to move on from this.” It's a week after the Ferguson ruling and Beverley sits across from me, poking ice cubes in her empty cocktail glass with a straw. I don't like her but I'm trying. There's no one else to talk…
by Tamuira Reid I remember being five years old and sitting in the pediatrician's office as my mother explained the problem. She talks in voices, doctor. Three or four of them at a time. I stand by her door and listen and it is frightening, I tell you. Just frightening. After hours of testing, more…
by Tamuira Reid Sunlight slices through the window, hitting her where she sleeps. Neighborhood kids, already going hard, squeal and play happily somewhere in the distance. I've been sitting on a cedar chest at the foot of her bed, waiting. I know better than to nudge MK to consciousness; she has a nasty right hook…