I just returned home from a ten-day vacation, only to realize that today is the last Sunday in April! So unfortunately I did not have the opportunity to create a sign-up list for other authors who might have wanted to participate in the April Charity Sunday blog hop. Next month, I promise!
Meanwhile, Charity Sunday stalwart Dee S. Knight emailed me to ask whether I’d forgotten to post the list! Please visit her Charity Sunday post here: https://www.nomadauthors.com/blog/2026/04/25/charity-sunday-travis-manion-foundation/
For today’s event, I am showcasing KIND – Kids In Need of Defense (https://supportkind.org). Worldwide, and especially in the U.S., immigrants and refugees are facing unprecedented scrutiny and draconian, sometimes violent or inhumane, enforcement. Children suffer more than anyone, not only from the physical rigors of detention but also from the psychological and emotional impact of being separated from their families. The latter can create life-long trauma that will prevent these kids from leading peaceful and productive lives.
KIND has a highly-focused mission: to protect and support unaccompanied migrant children. The organization provides pro bono legal representation for youth faced with the complexities of immigration law; social services to help children integrate into a foreign culture; policy initiatives to advocate for more sane and compassionate immigration legislation; and international awareness campaigns to highlight the problems of unaccompanied children worldwide.
Please visit KIND’s website to learn more about their work. For April’s Charity Sunday, I will donate two dollars for each comment I receive on this post. Note that the post will remain open for comments until May’s Charity Sunday.
For my excerpt, I’m sharing a bit from my story Divided We Fall. I wrote this in 2017, shortly after Trump’s first election victory. The story presents a world in which inter-group hostilities are deliberately fostered in order to undermine organized resistance. This trend has indeed come to pass.
Things are much worse than I ever imagined.
Do what you can. Leave a comment. Share this post. Practice compassion.
Excerpt
Please note that this excerpt contains racial slurs. This is deliberate in order to portray the hostility between the characters.
There are no walls. Just IEDs, trip-wire bombs and snipers. We’ve learned a few things from the jihadis.
The Santa Anas whip at the white rag attached to my broom handle as I cross Vermont. No-man’s land. Black hair tangles in my eyes, obscuring my vision. I should chop it all off, maybe even shave my head. That would be safer. Would look scarier, too. Pathetic how vanity survives, even in the most desperate situations.
Afternoon shadows stripe the broken pavement. The only vehicles visible are burned-out skeletons, picked clean by scavengers from both barrios. I dart from one to the next, keeping a good distance away from the blackened hulks while still trying to use them for cover as I approach the Niggertown gate. Any one of them could be booby-trapped, though that would break the unwritten rules that have allowed us Viets to co-exist with the niggers. So far at least.
I don’t want to be here. I’ve got no confidence my truce flag will buy me any kind of safety. But what can I do? My little brother’s disappeared, last seen headed toward the black ghetto. We searched every corner of Viet Village. Unless he’s deliberately hiding―not likely given his age and his usual good behavior― he must have wandered outside the bounds.
The many kinds of harm he might meet scroll through my mind like credits for some old movie. I force myself to slow down as I approach the West Century intersection, the only un-mined street leading east into Niggertown. Gripping my flag in one hand, I raise the other high to show I’m unarmed. It’s true, aside from the switchblade hidden my boot. I don’t step out of the abandoned grocery my family calls home without that knife. When I sleep, it hangs from cord around my neck, nestled between my breasts. Older Brother calls me Blade-Heart. He thinks it’s a joke, but his nickname suits me. I might ask Uncle Pham to tattoo it on my bicep.
“Freeze, bitch.”
I’m expecting the challenge, but still, my stomach does a queasy flip. I remain motionless, as instructed, keeping both hands visible. A tall, lean figure steps out from behind some pollution-rusted shrubbery in front of a ruined apartment building. He carries his Kalashnikov like it’s another limb, one which he points directly at me. Funny how there’s never enough food, but no problem getting guns.
“What you doin’ here? This ain’t your territory. You get your gook ass back ‘cross the street before I kick it back!”
Though the guard talks tough, I can see he’s young, maybe younger than I am. He fixes me with a belligerent glare and brandishes his weapon like he’d just as soon shoot me as not, but there’s a softness to his mouth that lets me imagine him smiling. Using his left hand to draw an ugly blade from his belt, he strides in my direction.
He wears threadbare jeans and a faded camouflage shirt, open to the waist. The inky skin on his bare chest gleams with sweat, despite the brisk wind. The paler flesh of a scar slashes across his chest, just above his left nipple. That must have been a dire wound, close to fatal. He might be young, but he’s no stranger to battle. None of us is, these days.
Please leave a comment – for the children who are our collective future. And do visit Dee’s post!
