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Michelle Obama Just Launched a Weekly Reading Series for Children


Former First Lady Michelle Obama is joining the ranks of celebrities doing all they can to help keep the nation entertained and engaged as we shelter in place during the coronavirus pandemic. And much as she did during her time in the White House, she’s focusing on children.

Last week, she announced a new online series called Mondays with Michelle Obama in partnership with PBS Kids and Penguin Random House. “I’m thrilled to share some of my favorite children’s books and give kids an opportunity to practice their reading (while giving families a much-needed break!),” she tweeted. “Join me, @PBSKIDS, and @penguinrandom for read-alongs on Mondays at 12pm ET on @PBSKIDS Facebook and YouTube!” You can watch the livestream at noon ET on PBS KIDS’ Facebook and YouTube, along with Penguin Random House’s Facebook.

“As a little kid, I loved to read aloud. And when I became a parent, I found such joy in sharing the magic of storytelling with my own children—and then later, as First Lady, with kids everywhere,” she said in a statement to NBC News. “At this time when so many families are under so much stress, I’m excited to give kids a chance to practice their reading and hear some wonderful stories (and to give parents and caretakers a much-needed break).”

She kicked off the series on April 20 with The Gruffalo, a childhood favorite of so many, and even suggested an additional activity tied to the story for families to try. The first video already has almost 200,000 views.

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As always, former President Barack Obama was all in on his wife’s endeavors. “Parents, you deserve a break—Michelle’s got storytime handled every Monday,” he tweeted. “She’s one of the best, I promise. (And I confess it makes me a little nostalgic.)”

Based on the reaction online, it seems like people agree.

We can’t wait to see which book she picks for next week’s session.



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I Don't Have Children, But I'm Still a Mom—Kind of


When we meet strangers, and I have to introduce the girls, I sometimes avoid having to identify our relationship by just saying their names, but everyone assumes I am their young mom. Other times, I say, “This is my kid.” Sometimes, the girls will get a wicked look in their eye and introduce themselves—“I’m her daughter.”

When they come over to our apartment for taco night or to eat my famous dinner of “engagement chicken”—which I got from this very magazine—and roast potatoes, we choose shows to watch “as a family”—like High School Musical, or AJ and the Queen, and it is forbidden to watch those outside of that arrangement—the four of us and our dog, Frankie, on the couch, with chamomile tea and snacks, blankets draped over us. The girls always raid our pantry for snacks seconds after finishing dinner and my partner makes their teas just so, with ice cubes and sugar, in mugs they choose.

The girls’ dad once told me I should be able to claim the girls as dependents on my taxes, but I wasn’t keeping them alive. I didn’t feed or clothe them daily, didn’t put a roof over their heads. Their parents did that. But I was spending a lot of money on them, and there was no way for me to formally recognize with the government that I kind of did have kids. Sort of. It was an alternative family structure, and the IRS has never been good at recognizing those. Not for queer families, of which I’m a part, and not for those who relationships don’t adhere to the traditional nuclear structure. I also, for example, help take care of my mom and brother and the IRS doesn’t have a form for that either.

Having the girls in my life hasn’t changed my decision about wanting kids in the conventional sense. But it has made me resolve to always have enough money and be emotionally stable enough to serve as a sturdy presence. I didn’t seek out Franny and Brianna. We stumbled onto each other and we fell in love with each other and we became family. I do think of them as my children and I know they think of me as their mom. I hope and assume that once they’re grown up, and I no longer have this exact role in their lives, I’ll find more family. I would like to do this again, I mean, and so would my partner. Other kids need us, too.

I’ll never forget the look on their faces when one Christmas, I gave them gift cards to Barnes & Noble, when they wanted some hot new Air Jordan release. And they’ll never forget the look on my face when they showed me what they’d bought with those gift cards—not books, but Yale hoodies and stuffed animals from the Yale bookstore, where I earned a graduate degree.

I’ll never forget the feeling of getting a call from Brianna, her knowing she could tell me [redacted] and we wouldn’t judge.

I’ll never forget the feeling of finding out the boy advice I’d given Franny and Brianna had spread from girl to girl in their high school like wildfire, putting the fucbois in their lives on notice.

They’re my kids. And they’re not. I’m their mom. And I’m not. And that’s the case for millions of families in this country, families who have been affected by the war on drugs, by mass incarceration, by detentions, by deportations, by poverty, by the opioid crisis, by Covid-19. Millions of us have stepped in to take care of children who need us in very specific ways and we’ve come to love them so that they might as well be our blood. This is what family looks like.

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio is a writer who lives in New Haven. Her first book The Undocumented Americans is out now.



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In Refugee Settlements in Uganda, Survivors of Sexual Assault Grapple with How to Raise Children Born of Rape


The war came to the Equatoria Region, where Diria lived, in 2016. That area sits at the bottom tip of South Sudan, and Diria resided in a village called Lasu Payam. When the fighting broke out, she, her four children, her sister-in-law, and some other women in the community hired two vehicles to drive them to the Ugandan border. Diria sat with about seven other people, including her sister-in-law. Her children were in the car ahead. She recalls to Glamour that the group had been driving for three days, inching past checkpoints, when soldiers blocked the path around Mugo Payam, about 50 miles from Uganda, directing their guns at the vehicle transporting her. It was early afternoon.

The soldiers’ faces were covered. They told everyone to get out of the car. Then the men were taken. Diria hasn’t seen them since. The soldiers separated the women into two groups. As she remembers it, the soldiers took the women to the bush and hit them with their guns. Diria still has back pain from the abuse. She heard shouting in Arabic, commands directed toward her to lie down. All the women were gang raped. Her sister-in-law, killed. After Diria had been sexually violated by five men, there was a cascade of shooting and the soldiers ran. Diria and three other women struggled back to the roadside and saw the driver of their car, shot. They managed to wave down a driver in another car headed for the border who let them hitch a ride. It took another two days to cross into Uganda.

In Keri, the transit center where refugees stay for days or weeks for processing before getting settled in one of 11 areas allocated to South Sudanese refugees in Uganda, Diria started throwing up. She went to the health center and took a pregnancy test. It was positive. The doctor offered to sell her a pill that he said would make the baby “go away” for 200,000 Ugandan Shillings (about $54), but she couldn’t afford that price. She tried drinking two cups of herbs she mixed together, hoping the cocktail would make her bleed. Nothing happened. She told her husband. He beat her. He went back to South Sudan. Now, he’s blocked her from calling him. Twice she almost hung herself. Then, she figured that after giving birth, she’d kill the child.

But when Abraham was born, he went to her to nurse. After he drank from her breast, she says couldn’t bring herself to kill him. Three months later he started to smile. That’s when she says she started to love him. During the first of three interviews with Glamour, Abraham toddles over to his mother and throws himself in her lap, face down, little arms splayed across her thighs. She looks down and the corners of her mouth tick up; her face is thick with affection. At church she holds him close throughout the entire service.



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Our Children Have My Last Name. No, My Husband Doesn't Mind


When my daughter was born in 2005, my husband and I decided to give her my last name. At the time, the choice felt more personal and practical than political. My husband, whose last name is Ryan, already had two sons who bore his surname. Between his five siblings and him, there were eleven grandchildren carrying on the Ryan name. We Brodeurs did not have the same numbers on our side. At the time of my daughter’s birth, it seemed possible that she might be the only child of her generation. Three years later, when our son was born, we deliberated for longer—was it fair that both children should have my name?—before deciding that he, too, would be a Brodeur. (Both children have the middle name Ryan.)

Bucking the system didn’t go unnoticed. Even though my friends, mostly progressive, were supportive of the decision, almost every one of them raised a flag of hesitation: Would it somehow undermine our sense of family? Would our children be teased? And the biggie: How did my husband really feel? Beneath every reaction, even from people who clearly admired the choice, lay the assumption that my husband must be a pushover and I, a master manipulator.

My husband shrugged it off.

From my own anecdotal research, of the very few heterosexual married couples who opt to pass along the mother’s last name, most do so for the same reason as we did: the mother’s lineage is at stake. But today, 14 years after making the initial decision, I have to acknowledge that preserving the Brodeur name wasn’t the only reason behind it. Now I can admit to something I wasn’t even aware of back then: I wanted my children to have my last name simply because I wanted it. I can feel a tinge of shame at the brazenness of this desire, but that emotion is followed quickly by a stronger one—anger.

The author with her husband and children.

China Jorrin

Men rarely feel guilty or question their motives when it comes to naming their progeny. They’re certainly not accused of being manipulative. Like so many privileges, it’s a given. In our failure to question patrilineality—literally the tracing of descent through the paternal line—or consider the alternatives, we take for granted the primacy of the male line and deny the mother’s history. The male monopoly on surnames in our culture goes back centuries and has its roots in the ownership and tracking of property, which then included wives, children, and slaves.

I’ve spent much of the last three years writing a memoir about the complicated relationship I have with my own mother, a primary love and powerful force in my life. In that time, I’ve explored the threads that link families across generations and the extent to which we can choose what we pass on to our children. To be sure, a name is one such choice. It binds a person to a familial line and history not only in legal and social ways, but in emotional ones, too. I am the child of both of my parents but, unquestionably, my mother had an outsized influence over me. Yet, it is my father’s name that I have passed onto my children. In her lifetime, despite having a successful and public career entirely of her own making, my mother used four different last names—her father’s and her three husbands’.



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Selena Gomez Speaks Out Against 'Inhumane' Treatment of Immigrant Children at the Border


Following recent disturbing reports about the treatment of migrants, especially children, at U.S. Customs and Border Protection facilities in Texas, Selena Gomez spoke out on Instagram on Saturday (June 29), calling their living conditions “absolutely inhumane” and urging followers to also speak out against the children’s treatment.

According to a report by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit media organization based in the state, children have no soap, toothpaste, or diapers and are being forced to sleep on the floor in overcrowded detention centers.

“Kids in cages! Sleeping on concrete floors with aluminum blankets! No access to simple dignities! How is this still happening??? It’s absolutely inhumane to treat anyone like this let alone children. I can’t even imagine what they are going through. We need to get this to finally stop! Don’t stay silent on this human rights issue,” Gomez wrote, adding the hashtags #CloseTheCamps and #FamilesBelongTogether.

This isn’t the first time Gomez has voiced her concern for the families and children who are being separated at the border because of President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.

“It’s extremely disheartening,” Gomez told The Hollywood Reporter during the Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation premiere last year. “There’s a lot of confusion and anger. It’s definitely been affecting so many people who are close to me.”

She also tweeted in support of the Keep Families Together Marches that took place on June 30, 2018.

Earlier this month, reports MSN, the government argued in an appeals court that because the 1997 Flores agreement, which stipulates that migrant children must be housed in “safe and sanitary” conditions, doesn’t specifically mention items like toothbrushes and soap, they’re not directly required to provide those items.



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What Luxury Beauty Means to Undocumented Immigrants and Their Children


I grew up poor. Not broke, which isn’t poor, and not bohemian poor, like a gentrifier living in the ghetto but able to afford nice clothes. Undocumented-child-of-undocumented-immigrants poor, which means that even as I worked to g degrees from Harvard and Yale, delivering the American Dream at my parents’ feet, my mother and father are in a perpetual, worsening state of poverty because they are aging out of manual labor in a country that is trying to expel them. They’ve paid their taxes for decades but haven’t been able to put a penny towards their retirement. They do not qualify for public benefits. That kind of poor.

For my family poverty is like walking in a hurricane. I spend my money buying my parents umbrella after umbrella; each provides some relief, then breaks—cheap fixes, all of them. The rain has paused for now. But it will resume. In Spanish, we call that pause escampo. The rain has escampado. I have some discretionary income. Most of that goes towards my family, my reporting, or towards immigrants in my community who need it. It will not last forever.

But about a year ago, a curious thing happened. I walked into a Sephora and realized I could buy whatever I wanted.

I walked right out. That didn’t feel right. Later I went back in to Sephora with my mother and I told her I would buy her whatever she wanted. That felt better. She has studied fashion magazines since she was a kid in Ecuador and had her wishlist: Nars Blush in Orgasm. YSL Touche Éclat Radiance Awakening Foundation. A tube of Rouge Dior lipstick in deep red. A bottle of Byredo “Rose Noir” Eau de Parfum that Sephora didn’t have in stock. And on and on.

Up until that point, she had owned drugstore products. My mother was emotional and cleared her dresser bureau to organize the new makeup. The Chanel shadows never left their velvet sleeves with their trademark hot-stamped logo. I think she used her fingers to smudge on the shimmers not to maximize pigment, but because she didn’t want to stain the tiny applicators. The Byredo perfume would be spritzed twice (just twice) whenever she went to a graduation or a funeral. She never even removed the BeautyBlender from its plastic case to keep it clean. She kept purchasing drugstore bronzers so she wouldn’t have to deplete the Bare Minerals one I got her, the same one I use. It’s called “A Little Sun” and it’s golden brown with a slight red tint. I’ve never gone on a vacation, but I always liked the way white girls at Harvard looked in September after they’d spent weekends biking through the Cape.

For my mother, a top shelf is a magical cloud of luxury, a delicious feel-good fantasy.

My mother and I had disagreements about it. I could see that she rarely used her makeup, reserving it for special occasions or for church. Weeks passed, and she continued to venture into Manhattan barefaced. I panicked and pleaded with her to wear it whenever she encountered white people who determined her life or livelihood, like at work or at the doctor’s office. I asked her to wear a full face of makeup whenever I was not with her to serve as her interpreter, whenever my credit card could not communicate in a demented shorthand that we are human too. But she wouldn’t listen. For my mother, a top shelf is a magical cloud of luxury, a delicious feel-good fantasy.

But my mother doesn’t read the news in order to preserve her sanity and I have to for my job—I’m an immigration writer—so she doesn’t know about the Border Patrol agents who dump gallons of water that humanitarian groups have left in the desert for migrants. I do. For me, as a formerly undocumented young woman and the daughter of undocumented immigrants, makeup has become a talisman—an attempt to ward off evil.

PHOTO: Photo by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

A look at my mother’s vanity

I didn’t learn to use makeup from my mother, as I know many young women do. Growing up, my Latinx immigrant family followed strict traditional gender roles where my dad worked out in the world and my mom stayed home with me and my brother. My father had expectations when he came home from work—dinner, a clean house, the usual. But he also expected my mother to look beautiful. He expected her to do the work with her hair down, makeup on, in heels. Instead, she wore sweats, sunscreen, and her hair in a bun. I admired that about her, even when it ended in a fight. My mother made it clear she’d never wear makeup for a man.

Like she had, I learned about makeup from magazines, where the beautiful models and celebrities were mostly white. It wasn’t until Jay-Z said, “Put some colored girls in the MoMa” in 2011 that I stopped wanting to look like a French gamine. Jackie Aina on YouTube came to me like a revelation. I watched her videos and learned how to address hyperpigmentation, color correction, and a status quo that doesn’t want to cater to dark skin. It took a gorgeous black makeup artist who had been through hell and back to make me understand what it could mean to talk about makeup in terms of self care. Her looks were radical acts—declarations of delight and exuberance.

My mother is beautiful. Sometimes I attempt to conjure up what a racist person might see if he looked at her at her most glamorous and regal, with her fig-brown skin and a caravan nose straight out of a Renaissance portrait. I think about the tear-gassed toddlers on the border, their parents desperate for asylum. I wonder if he processes her as human.

I can’t protect my mother from getting fired from her job, or detention, or deportation. I can’t even protect her from daily encounters with racist abuse. But I can use the master’s own tools to prepare her to step into the master’s house.

I understand this is twisted.

I think a lot about an experiment I read about in Scientific American in which black and white participants in a mall were asked to determine how much to spend on a pair of expensive headphones. Half of the black participants were first made to review a list of racist traits associated with African-Americans. Afterwards, when the participants were shown photographs of the headphones, the individuals who had been forced to read the list offered to pay a lot more money than either the white participants or the black participants who hadn’t had to confront those stereotypes.

PHOTO: Photo by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

The author

I pay for nice makeup because I want to prove that I can—once a saleswoman at a department store asked too pointedly if I needed help and I ended up buying two Chanel lipsticks and a blush that I didn’t need—and because maybe it’ll make someone think twice before they assume who my mother and I are based on the color of our skin.

Earlier this fall, I bought the Tom Ford Shade and Illuminate. It costs $85, what my father earns for a full day of work as a salad maker. But the packaging is gorgeous. It contours and highlights, and I like to sweep it over Sonia Kashuk Undetectable Crème Bronzer to deepen my brown skin. A good dupe for it is the Wet n Wild MegaGlo Makeup Stick, which retails for $3.99. I use both. The truth is I like the Wet n Wild one even better because it’s dispensed in a stick, so I don’t need to use a brush, and the color is warmer.

But when I have to go into spaces where I know I will feel intimidated because of my race or when I have to talk to powerful white people whom I know do not see me as an equal—even if it’s on the phone, even if I’m just in a towel, right out of the shower, even if I have to drink a vodka soda to muster up the courage to voice my opinion—I wear a full face of makeup and every cream and powder that touches my skin is designer. YSL, Dior, Chanel, Tom Ford. My armor.

I feel beautiful when I am able to grit my teeth and get it done, when I can bite the inside of my cheeks and not cry, when I can show off a steely face to the world. Makeup helps me do that.

Some more enlightened women than I will tell me they feel beautiful when they are surrounded by the people they love, when they drink a lot of water, when they spend time with their children. I feel beautiful when I am able to grit my teeth and get it done, when I can bite the inside of my cheeks and not cry, when I can show off a steely face to the world. Makeup helps me do that.

I have nightmares about deportation and internment camps every night. But sometimes when I can’t fall asleep, I fantasize about meeting the President of the United States and I feel a surge of warm pleasure as I imagine step-by-step how I’d prepare. I’d line my lips in red liner then fill them in with multiple coats of MAC in Russian Red. Long, curled lashes coated in Too Faced Better Than Sex Mascara. If I needed to cry, I’d cry in the bathroom, silently. The formula is waterproof, so I’d be able to hide the evidence.

Makeup makes me feel beautiful and it makes me feel powerful, but it doesn’t make me feel like a pretty girl. Makeup makes me feel like a woman with a plan for survival. I don’t play with makeup. I unleash it.

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio is a writer living in New Haven, Connecticut. She is an Emerson Collective Fellow. You can follow her on Instagram @kcornv.

Main Photo: Getty Images





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