Narratively

As an Indonesian adoptee in Sweden, I was alarmed when my new stepbrother started dabbling in white supremacy. I didn’t realize how far it had gone until I was lying in a dark field, getting kicked in the chest with a steel-toed boot.

I have learned all the stories my father was too protective of me to share, parsed the conflicting histories and studied the maps. Now I can finally recreate our family’s lost home, in a once small village in Palestine.

I was 13 when my father was killed right before my eyes. Two weeks later, while everyone in our small town obsessed over his grizzly death, I embarked on a new horror: 8th grade.

In a Bible-belt state where sex toys stores are illegal, a church-going grandma, enterprising mom and sassy granddaughter build a booming business hawking penis pumps and butt plugs—and helping every person find their path to pleasure.

In her first graphic novel, Narratively Contributor Sophia Glock documents her teenage unraveling after she figured out what her mom and dad really did for a living.

I was an 18-year-old father who couldn’t be there for his baby. I know, you’ve heard this one before. How about this part? Twelve years later Krystasia’s mom walked away and never came back.

After suddenly becoming a full-time solo dad, Narratively contributor Kern Carter found creative inspiration in his close-knit relationship with his teenage daughter.

In gritty 1980s New York, one West Village flophouse became a last-chance refuge for addicts, criminals, LGBTQ runaways, and anyone with nowhere left to go. And my mom was their queen.

Lilly Dancyger on what the decade-long process of writing her book taught her about memoir, grief and becoming an artist.