Read the winning piece of our 2025 Nonfiction Contest “Through the Mirror” by Jessie Cato selected by Lucy Ives.

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Claudine Rankine

Poetry

Spring 1994

Birthright

By Claudine Rankine

Begin with white sheets flapping amiably in an early breeze, the heavens dawning biblical blue and my mother teaching me to believe in the goodness of mankind but to trust […]

Poetry

Spring 1994

New Windows

By Claudine Rankine

1. The stewardess gave me—I had just turned six—a white eyelet sweater. It was late November 1968. This is America, she told me, cold, not like the West Indies. One […]