Artist Jo Cosme grew up being told Puerto Rico was paradise. Her work asks who that story actually belongs to. Yolanda Cosme  grew up in Borikén, the indigenous name for the island the Spanish renamed Puerto Rico, absorbing a story about herself that wasn't hers. It was the story colonialism tells: that North Americans are more educated, more intellectual, more worthy. That to be from the Caribbean is to be lesser. "We grew up with this shame of being savages," she says. "Tha

"The practice of joy is reclaiming how to be safe in a moment, even when the world is not safe." Physician, author, and global trauma worker Dr. Tanmeet Sethi has spent decades sitting with suffering—in disaster zones, in exam rooms, and in her own home after her son was diagnosed with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, which progressively destroys muscle tissue and is fatal. She talks about receiving that diagnosis, while nine months pregnant with her third child, in her New York

Dr. J.P. Anderson, one of Cultures Connecting’s racial equity specialists,   recently joined the University of Washington (UW) as a faculty member in the American Ethnic Studies department where he teaches in the Integrated Social Sciences program (ISS). ISS is designed specifically to accommodate students outside of a traditional campus schedule—and for many, it is their only pathway to a bachelor’s degree. The program serves a wide range of nontraditional students includin