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 like going back to California. I pack my bag days in advance. Organize plane tickets. Make plans with friends to meet at various restaurants. I am going home. Home is where my family is. Mom. Sisters. An eccentric artist father who paints pictures in the woods. The Pacific Ocean full of…
by Tamuira Reid It is not important that you don't know why you cry anymore. That you just do. It is not important or monumental; just a part of your day like anything else. Like driving to the bank or picking up the dry cleaning. It doesn't help to talk about it. To hear words…
by Tamuira Reid “My daddy stays in that building? Not a house?” I'm glad it looks more like an office building and less like a hospital. My son has lived in a city long enough to know what a hospital looks like. This is a slate rectangle, with a line of tinted windows overlooking the…
by Tamuira Reid I don't like writing about depression. Because it's hard to get right in words. Because I sound like an asshole when I try. Because I am too close to it still. Because my memory of what happened feels faulty at best. I remember light streaming through the blinds, big fat rays of…
by Tamuira Reid I'm pregnant. You say the words the same way you say I'm an alcoholic, but this time you aren't sitting in a church basement with a shitty assortment of store-bought cookies on your lap. You hear a small, unmistakable gasp on the other end of the line – “Mom, are you there?”…
by Tamuira Reid I. Theresa He hit her, not the other way around. Thought it was a deer, she told the police. Same kind of thud, thick and heavy. It was raining but not too hard. The impact dented the hood, busted the window, the glass splintered and folded in on itself. Killed a man…
by Tamuira Reid Mary hears voices. Voices that awaken her from a deep, dark sleep. Voices that pull and laugh and tug. Voices that make her lock and unlock doors. Wash clean dishes. Fold and unfold clothes. Voices that make her tired. There's an orange one. A tan one. A red one. A handful of…
by Tamuira Reid Bucharest, Romania, 2009. Madonna gyrates her way across a brightly lit stage in front of 60,000 screaming fans. Suddenly she stops, looks sternly out into the crowd. “It has been brought to my attention … that there is a lot of discrimination against Romanies and gypsies in general in Eastern Europe,” she…
by Tamuira Reid Duck into the nearest bar, grab a stool, roll-up your sleeves. Get down to business. Take a shot. Take another. Take a third. Drink a glass of wine, a glass of beer, a glass of vodka. Rinse. Repeat. You remember how to do this. A pro never forgets. You should call your…
by Tamuira Reid I. It's hot out. We're by the pool. “Shh – baby, we're talking. I'm talking to your father.” Mama slaps my butt playfully, not hard like when I ate all her thyroid pills. Not hard like when she's scared. I climb onto her lap. Papa watches us from the pool. It's shaped…
by Tamuira Reid Oliver, take your binky out. Uh-uh. Now. Nope. He wriggles free from my grasp and stands under a small television haphazardly jetting out from the waiting room wall. I hate waiting rooms. You're always waiting for something bad to happen. A woman appears, says she is The Doctor, and begins to watch…
by Tamuira Reid “Planes have always been a theme in my life,” my father says and asks me how the essay is going. I tell him fine. It has some problems, but fine. Still trying to work out the structure. I hear him smile to fill the distance between us. The last decade was bad…