Spring is the season for daydreaming. But just as quickly as the season fades into summer, so too do our dreams vanish right before our eyes.

In this issue of InTheFray, we highlight stories concerning the fleeting nature of our dreams and expectations. We begin on the streets of Manhattan, where ITF Contributing Writer Erin Marie Daly offers us a poignant glimpse of the taxing, scarcely acknowledged existence of homeless transgender teens in How many strikes. We then board Brooklyn’s Q train with Iraq war veteran Boris Pukhovitskiy, whose Homecoming from a 16-month tour of duty in Iraq forces him to bridge the world he left behind with a changing New York landscape.

Meanwhile, in Kenya, Marian Smith’s conscience gets the best of her when she sees the Maasai’s dung houses standing alongside her own luxurious accommodations during A summer of gracious living. But as she discovers, she’s the only one troubled by this disparity.

Back in the United States, Ellen Wernecke exposes just how illusive such gracious living is for Americans on welfare in her insightful review of Jason DeParle’s American Dreams. Rounding out this month’s stories is Kimberlee Soo’s Covergirl, an all-too-familiar tale of a little sister who aspires to her older sister’s beauty, only to discover her sister also longs for something more.

Thanks for reading!

Laura Nathan
Editor
Buffalo, New York

Coming soon: A whole new look and feel to our website!

Laura Nathan-Garner