THE NEIGHBORHOOD OPTIONS IN HOUSTON—huge, sprawling, diverse Houston—are seemingly endless. Choosing which part of town suits you best is a challenge, equal parts exciting and overwhelming. Maybe you’d do anything to avoid a hefty commute to your office in the Galleria. Maybe you’re all about the quality of your kid’s school. Maybe you want walkable […]
Author Archive | Roxanna Asgarian
Far from the Turmoil of Home, Six Houston Artists Pursue Their Creative Dreams
Ammar Alobaidi knows what it’s like to arrive in a new country and have to learn everything all over again. Born in Baghdad, Iraq, he lived in Libya and Jordan before coming to Houston, in 2014, as a refugee. How would he get a driver’s license in this strange new place, 7,000 miles away from […]
Call of the Wild Zine
Call of the Wild
Fairview teacher remembered for making an impact on school
by Roxanna Asgarian Nov 24, 2014 in Houston Chronicle You didn’t have to be in one of Ivan Garza’s classes or on one of his teams for him to know you by name and greet you everyday. His recent unexpected death left the school mourning while students and staff members reflected on what Garza did to […]
Reporter’s Notebook: Teenage Idiocy a Huge Gamble in Many States
By: ROXANNA ASGARIAN | November 21, 2014 on JJIE.org I was 13, and my girlfriends and I had just begun to hang out with some older boys. It was the summer before the eighth grade, and they were 16, going to be juniors, and they had a car. We’d hang out late at night, each […]
North Carolina Considering Raising Misdemeanor Age
By: ROXANNA ASGARIAN | September 25, 2014 on JJIE.org NEW YORK — The students at Enloe High School in Raleigh, N.C., were gearing up for the end of the school year in May 2013 when some of them devised a senior prank. They’d begun promoting an upcoming water balloon fight on social media, and the school administration had […]
Harlem Raid Families from Both Sides Make a Plan
By: ROXANNA ASGARIAN | September 10, 2014 JJIE.org NEW YORK — It was early August, exactly two months after the largest raid in New York City history at the Grant and Manhattanville housing projects, when 20 people, mostly older folks, crammed into the Community Board 9 office in a tiny storefront in Harlem. Domino’s boxes were spread across […]
A Rigged System
Originally appeared in Bitch Magazine.
Aches and Pains Offer Window to Deeper Problems
July 28, 2014 3:40 pm By Roxanna Asgarian | VOICES OF NY Gloria Huh was 26 and juggling multiple jobs while earning her master’s degree in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania when she got a persistent twitch in her eye. She had been gaining weight, and her muscles ached. She went to her doctor, hoping to get a medical […]
The Two Sides of Raise the Age in New York
By: ROXANNA ASGARIAN | July 7, 2014 NEW YORK — It was the tail-end of rush hour on a Thursday in March, and commuters were packed tightly onto a Brooklyn bus in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Passengers included a woman with her two small children, a Brooklyn father on the way from one job to another, and a couple of kids […]