Perhaps this is a sign, she thinks, rocking Layla back to sleep, that it is too early in her daughter’s life to prioritize anything else above being a mom.
Shouldering a fleeting feeling of resentment at the situation, then a deeper sense of guilt, Quammie consoles Layla. With her husband working nights, Quammie is alone, on solo baby duty. But, as a Black woman in Canada trying to kick-start her freelancing career, she feels she owes it to herself to try.Īs soon as she sits down, there’s a familiar wail, one so loud she doesn’t need the ever-present baby monitor to hear it. She’s unsure if she can complete the application in time. As a health-care worker and freelance writer on top of being a mother to a toddler, she is busy and tired. Quammie makes her way over to her workstation in the corner of the room, rubs her eyes, and opens her laptop. Five hours to compile a letter of intent, past pieces of her work, and an example of a work in progress she wants to workshop. She’s been meaning to apply ever since first hearing about it-but now only has five hours until the application is due. If Quammie were to be accepted, she would get to travel to the New Haven campus and have one of her works in progress picked over and perfected. It was launched in 2006 to offer people at Yale and beyond an entry into journalism. Quammie learned about the THREAD at Yale fellowship, an offshoot of the Yale Journalism Initiative, a month earlier. But she only has a moment to relax before her phone pings with a self-set reminder: “Did you apply for Yale yet?” When she reaches her living room, she flops onto the couch and retreats under a blanket. on a late spring night in 2016, and it’s getting dark. Now it’s harder.īee Quammie creeps down the stairs of her Oshawa townhouse, trying her best to embody silence, holding her breath to prevent her one-year-old, Layla, from waking up. It’s never been easy to be a journalist and a mother.
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