Kwame Opam

Nov 28, 2024 | chicago.suntimes.com | Kwame Opam

When I asked Selene Gill if she felt a sense of home at AlleyCat Comics, the comic book shop she co-owns with her husband on the Far North Side, she told me she’d made something more. “To me, this place is a home base. It’s not just a home,” she told me.

Dec 15, 2023 | chicago.suntimes.com | Kwame Opam

When the heavy oak door to our two-flat slammed shut behind me that October evening, I knew it’d be some time before I returned to New York City. Our family — my wife, our 1-year-old son, one stressed-out tabby and I — had only moved to the North Side six weeks earlier. The trip back east was for saying goodbye to friends and colleagues. But more than that, it was a farewell to the only city I could credibly say I knew. Credibly, for having been born and raised there. Never completely.