[image description: a graphic that says “current issue” with a photo of the cover of Southern Women’s Review. The cover has a photo of abstract art sculptures of women’s torsos carved in stone and an “SWR” graphic.]

Sometimes the road to publishing is a long one…

If you’ve ever driven around Birmingham, Alabama, or through the south on I-65, you’ve probably seen the Shunnarah Injury Lawyers billboards. They’re EVERYWHERE. And if you’ve seen them, you know that’s not an exaggeration.

In addition to the billboards, Alexander Shunnarah had commercials that aired constantly on daytime TV networks. His marketing campaign has made him not only wealthy, with dozens of law offices throughout the southeast, but also a local celebrity.

With Shunnarah being an unusual surname, I was constantly asked if he was my dad. I was in college at the height of this and could hardly go a day without being asked half a dozen times if he was my dad.

The irony is that, while I assume we’re somehow distantly related, I’ve never met Alexander Shunnarah. My father was a drug addict who hadn’t had gainful employment in two decades and whom I had been estranged from for nearly as long. Needless to say, he was not a and I was not a trust fund baby.

Yet, based on nothing more than my last name, people assumed I was rich. Despite working 25 hours a week while going to school full time in undergrad, I had countless scholarship applications and financial aid opportunities denied based on my last name.

Of course, none of this is Alex’s fault, though that didn’t make it any less frustrating.

In 2016, I took a class on social justice poetry. In it, I wrote a poem expressing my resentment at forever having people make unfounded assumptions about me. The instructor encouraged me to submit it to lit mags.

I chose to submit to Southern Women’s Review because it’s based in Birmingham and the title, “that damn lawyer who shares my name,” doesn’t require explanation when they see my byline.

It’s finally published and you can download the entire issue of Southern Women’s Review for free!

Thank you, as always, for reading and supporting my work. I’d love to hear what you think.