Family Lore

by Elizabeth Acevedo

How do you learn to live with what will not be? How do you console yourself with the life that you have when the humans you love most are hopeful for more than you?

If a gang in its purest sense is defined as a group of criminals, and if one’s very body is a commodity, such that fighting for freedom is illegal, then a group of freedom fighters must be considered a gang.

It’s silly to have a nickname for a nickname, but we’d always loved taking apart each other’s names and seeing how else we could arrange the letters into love.