After her own bout with mental illness, Roberta wanted to try to understand her childhood better, to learn more about her mother's life and experiences. What she found shocked her.

Shortly after he sold into slavery on a Thai fishing boat, Vannak Anan Prum saw one of his fellow Cambodian workers fall overboard. He and the other crew members rushed to rescue him, but the captain told them to throw the man back. It’s bad luck to save someone the sea gods have already claimed, the captain said.

"I had no idea how I was going to be open about it professionally. For ages it seemed like a possibility so out of reach it never really crossed my mind."

A white, working-class rapper talking about depression in the current political climate might seem like a message for kids wearing MAGA caps, but Orrick is more interested in calling out the wealthy and empathizing with grocery clerks.

"I can't bust out a face-melting solo, because I don't have a bass guitar chugging below it, but I'm also terrible at face-melting solos."

"People don't expect much from us, and then they'll be shocked.”

"I think there's so much in this world that tries to make you act and be a certain way. By doing these roles for so long in my life, I started to lose my sense of who I was and who I am."

The project was specifically intended as a way to explore Ei's gender identity and mental illness.

Mobley's story is pretty typical for young touring musicians. But he wishes it was less so—and that he'd known starting out that being a musician didn't have to mean suffering for your art.

While science-fiction film and television have made strides in terms of female representation, they've carefully avoided the more adventurous storylines and approaches of feminist sci-fi in print.

More than 40 Chicago community organizations have endorsed the #NoCopAcademy campaign, an effort to derail a $95 million police and fire training facility and redirect the funds to other community priorities.