I have been listening to the run up to the celebrations of this day, and of course the speeches made today at the Lincoln Memorial. It is strange that the first time I heard about that memorial, it was through my mother and father speaking to me about Marian Anderson. My mother . . .
Read MoreAt the bottom of this post is the close of James Baldwin’s 1963 essay, ‘A Talk to Teachers,’ which opens the collection of essays, Multi-cultural Literacy (Rick Simonson and Scott Walker, Eds. Graywolf Press, 1988), that I began to read a few days ago. I began to read this book looking for . . .
Read MoreI have a good friend, a dear one who does all kinds of favors for me, practical ones and impractical outrageous ones. Mostly, she listens to me. She reminds me of home. Recently I had a chance to visit her where she now lives, both of us far from the place where . . .
Read MoreA long time ago, it seems, I wrote a post here called ‘On Publication,’ during pub-week for A Disobedient Girl. I just re-read that this morning. Funny how clarity of thought about some particular things comes to each of us when it is necessary to have it. I realize, looking back, that . . .
Read MoreIn her book, Autobiography of My Mother (Plume 1997), Jamaica Kincaid writes that witnessing the unfolding of a life from birth onward is the essence of love: “no life is complete, no life is really whole, without this invisible current, which is in many ways a definition of love.” It being mother’s . . .
Read MoreI’m over at the Huffington Post with a recap on the PEN report on the ways in which the Chinese government has been suppressing the voices of that country’s writers. You can read it here. Below, an excerpt: PEN deserves to be recognized for the work the member centers have done to . . .
Read MoreI’m over at Bookslut today, answering questions about reading, writing, influences, as well a this one: And the family and friends who ushered you into adulthood? Who are they and in what ways do they appear in these pages? I think I was ushered into adulthood by a character called political violence, . . .
Read MoreI’ve been sitting here at my desk trying to sort out some things. I realize that almost all of it has to do with friendship, the kind that impacts our lives deeply and whose changes cause the kind of reverberations that transform how we will approach the world in the future. Today, . . .
Read MoreI don’t know too much about basketball. I don’t know too much about baseball either. But I can get madly excited about both. There is something about feeling one with a large group of people cheering for a team, putting our souls into their hands, that gets the blood flowing. And, like . . .
Read MoreOver at the Huffington Post with 13 bests from AWP2013. Here are numbers 5 and 6 (below). The rest, over there. 5. Best Tribute to the Legacy of a Teacher: Derek Walcott. Nothing can beat the stories told by a students – even those in absentia, as Melissa Green was, while the . . .
Read MoreI returned – a little bit tired – from AWP last night. I had intended to write something for this blog on the train from Boston to Philly – about impressions, about friends, and also write something about the sessions perhaps. A ridiculous idea, given the noise levels in the Loud Car . . .
Read MoreMy childhood home was filled with poetry. Not so much in books but in memory, recitation, rendition. The poems we brought home came copied down from books that other people owned.
Read MoreThanks to Libby Mosier for alerting me to this effort by Beth Kephart (all the lovely people live in Philadelphia!)
Read MoreAddendum: I had sent this on to the Huffington Post early on the 14th but it did not appear until today. So if you want to read the same piece over there, it is at this link. I began to write this as a comment to a post by a dear friend . . .
Read MoreIt is rare for me to talk about my personal life as it pertains to my immediate family and I know that grates on some people. There’s a reason for that, explained perhaps most clearly in this article I wrote for The Debutante’s Ball upon the publication of my first novel. Every . . .
Read MoreI’m writing this because I really need to vent and also channel the frustration of numerous friends who happen to be parents. Call it a public service announcement of sorts. (Addendum: Just as I finished this note I was informed by a new friend that there was a kindler/gentler version on the . . .
Read MoreI started to clean out my closet yesterday, a fun job that I like to do just to try on everything I have and separate things into various categories. It is therepeutic. I found some interesting things as I went through, things that reminded me of funny stuff from the past. I’m . . .
Read MoreThis is a complicated topic for me so I’m going to mull rather than follow my usual M.O. and pronounce! I’m really interested in knowing what people think – and please, a real conversation, not a bandwagon holler from one POV or the other. I’d have written this as an op ed . . .
Read MoreCable came to our house only on the heels of a Phillies season that had to be watched. I still don’t know how to use it or what to watch. There was a time when the small resident thought that TV meant the McNeil-Lehrer News Hour. She and by then her sisters . . .
Read MoreI’m over at the Huffington Post with the political POV on the Newtown massacre. Herewith, an excerpt (below). You can read the full article here. As human beings, we mourn for the innocents who had not yet learned to fear, who might have stood and gazed at their assailant, not undertanding his . . .
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