A New York Times book review led me to You Don't Know Us Negroes and Other Essays in 2022. It took me another year to follow up with Hurston's magnifiA New York Times book review led me to You Don't Know Us Negroes and Other Essays in 2022. It took me another year to follow up with Hurston's magnificent novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. At the time, I saved a link for Alice Walker's essay "Looking for Zora" which was originally published in Ms Magazine. Nudged by a recent review of a GR friend, I finally sat myself down to read the essay.
Walker was impressed with and influenced by the writing of Zora Neale Hurston. After reading her work, much of it out of print, Walker traveled to Hurston's hometown of Eatonville, FL to learn more about her and to visit her grave. Finding it overgrown and neglected, she paid to have a stone engraved and installed on the gravesite. She then wrote about her experience in this entertaining essay which excited new interest of academics and publishers in Hurston's work.
Thank you, Alice Walker, for giving us back Zora and her writing!
Dense, thought-filled, and thoughtful, Wendell Berry's collection of essays, Home Economics, invites me to set aside some quiet time to focus, read, pDense, thought-filled, and thoughtful, Wendell Berry's collection of essays, Home Economics, invites me to set aside some quiet time to focus, read, ponder and consider, and create my own response.
There is a lot of overlap in these essays, specific ideas spiral through many of the pieces. Some of the overarching themes are the connections between all, the negative influence of the industrial economy, the incalculable value of community, and the hubris of humans.
I agree with much of what Berry says in these essays. As a society we don't value the non-tangibles. How can I believe in an economy that only looks at gross domestic product to see if we are flourishing? an economy that doesn't subtract value for topsoil lost and for water fouled? I agree with his statement:
“It would have to be measured by the health of its communities, both human and natural."
Berry writes of ideas I have thought prior to reading this collection. For example: Wouldn't we have a stronger economy if rather than making throw away products we used good quality materials, made products that lasted, and challenged workers to create these products to the best of their ability? With this approach we are conserving resources, allowing people to use their brains and hands and to be satisfied by their work, employing more people, most likely creating less pollution, and keeping more money in local economies.
And he writes perspectives I have not considered.
I do not agree with all of his thoughts and conclusions such as the purpose of university--is it to develop a person as a thoughtful human capable of writing and speaking well or is it to teach one within more circumscribed limits to fill a specific job? I find this essay too narrow in the possibilities it offers.
I find the piece "Two Economies" circuitous, and I struggle in places to follow Berry's train of thought. I think what he is trying to say is that what will best serve us is to obtain the maximum good for the most people with the minimum consumption and good stewardship of the land/resources.
This collection consists of 14 essays which include the topics: the loss of communities and family farms, the overuse of technology and the underuse of human labor, national defense, and surplus farmers as the unemployed. Whether or not you agree with his opinions, Berry will provoke thought on many subjects that are issues just as current today as when he wrote these essays in the 1980's.
If your only experience of Japanese culture is Marie Kondo's philosophy of organization, Kakuzo Okakura's The Book of Tea might be a good int3.5 Stars
If your only experience of Japanese culture is Marie Kondo's philosophy of organization, Kakuzo Okakura's The Book of Tea might be a good introduction. Tea is important in many cultures. Okakura gives a short history of tea and it's arrival in Japan and how it's importance grew.
Tea with us became more than an idealization of the form of drinking; it is a religion of the art of life. The beverage grew to be an excuse for the worship of purity and refinement, a sacred function at which the host and guest joined to produce for that occasion the utmost beatitude of the mundane. The tearoom was an oasis in the dreary waste of existence where weary travelers could meet to drink from the common spring of art appreciation. The ceremony was an improvised drama whose plot was woven about the tea, the flowers, and the paintings. Not a color to disturb the tone of the room, not a sound to mar the rhythm of things, not a gesture to obtrude on the harmony, not a word to break the unity of the surroundings, all movements to be performed simply and naturally--such were the aims of the tea ceremony. And strangely enough it was often successful. A subtle philosophy lay behind it all. Teaism was Taoism in disguise."
This slim book of seven essays linking tea, philosophy, nature, and art was written for a Western audience. Okakura hoped to acquaint Westerners with some aspects of Japanese life to lay to rest some of the caricatures of the East.
The writing is poetic at times and stilted at others. This formality may possibly be due to these essays being written in 1906 by a scholar whose first language was Japanese rather than English.
I have to love a work that includes the word evanescence several times. When is the last time you have seen or heard it used?
A lovely read for tea lovers and non-tea lovers alike.
It's been years since I read E.B. White's collection of essays. Recently my GR friend Justin reviewed his writings from the New Yorker. Then Bonnie reIt's been years since I read E.B. White's collection of essays. Recently my GR friend Justin reviewed his writings from the New Yorker. Then Bonnie reviewed this slim volume. And I felt compelled to pick this one up to renew my acquaintance with Mr. White. Love and a hint of nostalgia for this wonderful city shines through his prose, each word perfectly placed to capture the essence of the city. A wonderful use of two lunchtimes....more
The Pedant in the Kitchen is a delightful collection of essays on, well, cookery. Julian Barnes calls himself "a late-onset cook." As such, he hews exThe Pedant in the Kitchen is a delightful collection of essays on, well, cookery. Julian Barnes calls himself "a late-onset cook." As such, he hews exactly to recipes and rails humorously at impreciseness.
I am also a late-onset cook, though for different reasons. My mother would most likely have welcomed me in the kitchen. She had many gifts, and cooking was not one of them. I didn't realize how much I like food until I began to prepare my own. Like Barnes, I began by strictly following a recipe. That soon went by the wayside. "Oh I don't have parsley or basil but I do have garlic and lemon thyme as well as a lemon. Let me try that." Now when my husband says, "write that down so you can make it again," he gives it a name and I write down a list of ingredients.
A friend, obviously a fellow pedant to Barnes, flipping through my created recipe book informed me, "These are NOT recipes!" when wanting to duplicate my mango avocado salsa. I offered to make it with him; he vociferously declined, declaring "I need measurements!"
I applaud Barnes for his enthusiasm in the kitchen and for wanting to nourish She for Whom He Cooks as well as various and sundry friends, and most especially for entertaining me over this past week as I dipped in and out of this collection.
Deborah Levy was asked to write a response to George Orwell's essay "Why I Write." She uses the four motives he proposed as titles for the four parts Deborah Levy was asked to write a response to George Orwell's essay "Why I Write." She uses the four motives he proposed as titles for the four parts of her essay, Things I Don't Want to Know: On Writing.
"Political Purpose" - In her meandering way Levy explores the role of woman/mother.
"chased by the women we used to be before we had children. We didn't really know what to do with her, this fierce, independent young woman who followed us about, shouting and pointing the finger while we wheeled our buggies in the English rain."
"Motherhood was an institution fathered by masculine consciousness. This male consciousness was male unconsciousness. It needed its female partners who were also mothers to stamp on her own desires and attend to his desires, and then to everyone else's desires. We had a go at cancelling our own desires. and found we had a talent for it."
"When a female writer walks a female character in to the centre of her literary enquiry . . . she will have to find a language that is in part to do with learning how to become a subject rather than a delusion, and in part to do with unknotting the ways in which she has been put together by the societal system in the first place. She will have to be canny how she sets about doing this because she will have many delusions of her own. In fact it would be best if she was uncanny when she sets about doing this. It's exhausting to learn ow to become a subject, it's hard enough learning how to become a writer."
I appreciate the points Levy makes. She does not, however, tie these thoughts together; and I feel dissatisfied as I move on to Part 2
"Historical Impulse" - Having recently read Damon Galgut's The Promise, I especially appreciate these reminiscences of the first 9 years of Levy's life spent in South Africa, especially the 4+ years during the period her father was a political prisoner. Apartheid, racism, and sexism are more of the things that Levy wishes she doesn't know about. And yet these are the meat of many histories with which societies are grappling.
"There was something I was beginning to understand at seven years old. It was to do with not feeling safe with people who were supposed to be safe. The clue was that even though Mr Sinclair [the school principal] was white and a grown-up and had his name written in gold letters on the door of his office, I was definitely less safe with him than I was with the black children I had been spying on in the playground. The second clue was that the white children were secretly scared of the black children. They were scared because they threw stones and did other mean things to the black children. White people were afraid of black people because they had done bad things to them. If you do bad things to people, you do not fee safe. And if you do not feel safe, you do not feel normal. The white people were not normal in South Africa."
"Girls have to speak up cuz no one listens to them anyway."
"I had been told to say my thoughts out loud and not just in my head but I decided to write them down."
"Sheer Egoism" - In this essay I see 15 year-old Deborah Levy in her black straw hat and lime green platform shoes hanging out in a greasy spoon by the bus station trying to imitate the poets and philosophers who inhabited the French cafes in years past. She already had the living in Exile thing down pat as her family moved to the UK a few months after her father's release from prison. And then her parents separated some time after that.
"Writing made me feel wiser than I actually was. Wise and sad. That was what I thought writers should be."
Writing led her to questioning and she questions her homeland.
"I had so many questions to ask the world from my bedroom in West Finchley about the country I was born in. How do people become cruel and depraved? If you torture someone, are you mad or are you normal? If a white man sets his dog on a black child and everyone says that's okay, if the neighbours and police and judges say, 'That's fine by me,’ is life worth living? What about the people who don't think it's okay? Are there enough of them in the world?"
"Aesthetic Enthusiasm" - The final part of Levy's essay is the shortest. Here she sums up her thoughts on why she, this woman, writes.
"We [women] were on the run from the lies concealed in the language of politics, from myths about our character and our purpose in life. We were on the run from our own desires too probably, whatever they were. It was best to laugh it off. The way we laugh. At our own desires. The way we mock ourselves. Before anyone else can. The way we are wired to kill. Ourselves. it doesn't bear thinking about. I did not want to know that I had been shut down. . .
"To become a writer, I had to learn to interrupt, to speak up, to speak a little louder, and then louder, and then to just speak in my own voice which is not loud at all."
"What do we do with knowledge that we cannot bear to live with? What do we do with the things we do not want to know?"
Just Us: An American Conversation is indeed a conversation that Claudia Rankine has with others and with herself. In this book, Rankine encourages me Just Us: An American Conversation is indeed a conversation that Claudia Rankine has with others and with herself. In this book, Rankine encourages me to have these deeper and more difficult conversations relating to race.
“You say and I say, but what is it we are telling, what is it we are wanting to know about here?”
This book is a patchwork of essays, data charts, social media posts, historical documents, excerpts from academic studies, poetry and much more. Her sections are laid out episodically so there is no narrative arc.
In an interview with the magazine O Rankine says that she prefers the term white living to white privilege. She defines it as "the ability to simply live your life—to walk down the street or enter your house without thinking about being stopped or shot. But it’s often misunderstood as being about economic advantage."
I want to note that one issue that I find missing in this work is conversations about socioeconomic status. Just Us focuses primarily on the places of economic privilege in which Rankine lives.
Rankine asks us all to consider how white and black lives are built upon a racial order, and to use conversation as a way to explore this question. She hopes that we can learn to speak to each other openly and honestly despite our discomfort, to get to know and to better understand each other, and perhaps in the process lose some fear and begin to trust each other so that we may be able to remove some of the structural blocks and biases that exist.
On a visit to her daughter’s mostly white school she thinks, “The thing that brought both my husband and me to the gymnasium, is the knowledge that though the deep-seated racist systems are reaffirmed and the evidence is there for us to see, I still want the world for my daughter that is more than this world, a world that has our daughter already in it.” In a perfect world we would all want more for all of the children.
Just Us is a great read to prompt discussion and to remind us that questioning, deep listening, vigilance, and ongoing conversations are strategies to push back against complicitness with racist structures.
How can a collection of personal essays with the central theme of fear make me laugh out loud, cry, examine facets of my life, break my heart, and putHow can a collection of personal essays with the central theme of fear make me laugh out loud, cry, examine facets of my life, break my heart, and put it back together? Somehow Megan Stielstra achieves this feat in her book The Wrong Way to Save Your Life.
Her opening essay concludes "If we're going to make it, we have to look at the fear. We have to get into it. Throw it against the wall, stand back and take a good close look. It's ugly: heavy, dark, and centuries in the making. You might want to move on, to turn it off, watch something else, but wait--look again. Look closer. How was it made? When was it made? What was happening when it was made? What are you going to do about it? And when are you going to start?"
Her collection turns into a memoir of sorts, though don't look for chronology here. Despite the frequent jumps, she somehow makes it work; and I can follow along. Some of the topics she explores are her parents' divorce, gun violence, toxic masculinity, post-partum depression, motherhood, her father's heart condition, relationships, and teaching.
Stielstra's writing sparkles as she tackles heavy subjects with wit, passion, and attention.
When concerned about Campus Carry legislation she tells us
"At the University of Texas at Austin, students are fighting their recently enacted Campus Carry legislation with dildos. . . . The short version is this: dildos are considered "obscene" and prohibited from campus so students are tying them to their backpacks by the dozens and showing up en-masse at what student organizer Jessica Jin calls -- wait for it, strap ins. . . . It's always been easy to buy or sell a gun in Texas, but up until 2008? You couldn't buy or sell a dildo. And while there are no limits to the number of guns one may own, up until 2003 it was a felony to own more than six dildos."
Telling part of the ongoing saga of her father's heart issues:
"I pictured my dad on Barometer Mountain on Kodiak, its two-thousand-some elevation gain spread with wildflowers and ridiculously amazing views. He's wearing camo overalls, 7mm rifle at the ready, eye on something four-legged, almost has it, almost there, and then--a sort of tingle, like firefly wings on the inside of your skin, running up his arms, down across his chest, circling around his heart like a washcloth in a fist, squeezing tighter, tighter, body locked, and all you can see is sky. Look up: the ceiling is all clouds. So white. So close. The inside of your skin.
[Uncle] Chuck and my brother, Thomas, were there to help. The clinic in Glennallen sent him by medevac to the hospital in Anchorage. Again. For surgery. Again."
Writing about a good friend who has helped her through her post-partum depression and many fears:
"Sarah is goddamn fucking sunshine. Weaponized optimism. You'll be all: 'I had a shitty day.' And she'll say, 'Oh, friend, that's terrible. Put down your things and we'll have a quick dance.' 'Sarah,' you'll say, 'we're in a parking lot.' Or: 'Sarah, it's raining.' Or: 'Sarah, there's no music,' and she will give you a look. You'll drop your stuff. You'll take off your shoes. You'll dance your face off to the sound of water hitting the pavement and yo know what? It's glorious.
I hope you have a person like that in your life. One who reminds you to choose joy."
Stielstra's essays are brilliantly written, personal, and messy. Read them. What are you afraid of?
Thank you to my GR friends Candi and Justin who pointed me toward this book....more
Zora Neale Hurston writes with a verve and a spark that I find compelling. Reading this collection of essays, a few a day, this past month has been a Zora Neale Hurston writes with a verve and a spark that I find compelling. Reading this collection of essays, a few a day, this past month has been a thought provoking experience. Sometimes I laughed like at the delightfully satiric essay "The Emperor Effaces Himself" about Marcus Garvey and the tongue in cheek essay "The Lost Keys of Glory" on gender roles. Sometimes I was educated. From the essay "Conversions and Visions" I learned that the phrase "rimbones of nothing' means "that space in which creation itself enters our lives in ways too deep for words and only sounds and images roil our souls, challenges our vision." What a beautiful meaning conveyed with just 3 words. I gained a new lens through which to see African-American created art, including the poetry of church sermons, literature, folklore, and music. I came to understand Hurston's sometimes controversial conservative political opinions.
This collection asks the reader to stop frequently to consider the points Hurston is trying to make and frequently to determine if her points are valid and if they still hold true today.
This book is extensively footnoted, the editors leaving nothing to chance. I had to laugh when I read the footnote telling who Thomas Jefferson and Martha Washington are.
One minor quibble--it would have been helpful if the date of publication or writing would have been placed with the title of each essay rather that having to hunt in the back of the book for these dates.
As the GR book blurb states You Don't Know Us Negroes and Other Essays "is an invaluable chronicle of a writer’s development and a window into her world and time."...more
Those of you who know me understand that it takes a lot for me to award 5 Stars to a book. This collection of essays deserves every one of them. All 2Those of you who know me understand that it takes a lot for me to award 5 Stars to a book. This collection of essays deserves every one of them. All 22 of these pieces resonated with me.
So much has already been written about this collection that I'll just leave you with my advice to get yourself a copy of this book as soon as you are able, and be ready for a feast.
My aunt gave me this book and a 3 day trip to the beach when I was pregnant with our second child. She told me to sit in the sand, listen to the oceanMy aunt gave me this book and a 3 day trip to the beach when I was pregnant with our second child. She told me to sit in the sand, listen to the ocean, and read. Since then, I have taken a few days for myself and re-read this book every decade. This book always enchants and speaks to me, though I hear it differently each time I read it....more
Jo Ann Beard's latest collection Festival Days is a collection of stories and essays that blend fiction and non-fiction. Her writi3.5 Stars Rounded Up
Jo Ann Beard's latest collection Festival Days is a collection of stories and essays that blend fiction and non-fiction. Her writing at the sentence level is stellar, each sentence near perfect in its composition. Beard's prose isn't flowery; it's clear and direct, all the while evoking whatever vision she is trying to convey.
In "Werner," describing his experience in the fire: "The whole thing now seemed like a succession of moments. In that moment, and the moment before, the smoke had been curling sideways around the building, a bolt of black cloth unwinding. Then it stopped and there was a moment of emptiness before the black current swept upward, and he realized it wasn't like cloth at all; it was dark and viscid, like used motor oil, and they weren't breathing it, they were drinking it."
Beard uses black humor to balance out the serious theme of end of life in "Cheri." "Cheri feels the stirrings of a cough deep inside her lungs. It's the monster locked in the basement, and eventually it will storm up the stairs and burst forth, attacking her in her own home, swinging a mallet at her chest over and over. Once she can breathe again, she makes a joke out of it: I'm Buddy Hackett, I'm Gene Hackman."
Two of her essays, "Close" and "Now" are written in a stream of consciousness style. While I appreciate her technical skill and how she brings all her streams together at the end, this is not a style that I personally resonate with. In "Now" she even includes some mention of her style:
"I don't know how long this should be, but I could keep going forever, linking one thought to the next, one image to the other. Ha--I can see the faces three weeks in the future and the collective look of horror at the idea that the speaker's sheaf of papers might be endless, self-perpetuating. The sheaf is not, but the story is. And I hope you'll notice also that there is no story. It's simply thinking, focused thinking, with words attached to memories attached to images and the images linked to form the elusive, still-blurry idea at its core. I can't yet separate it from the background."
All of her pieces are narratives interspersed with memories, time looping throughout. These memories tie back to the story in the end, and she mostly lands her stories and essays.
The titular essay, "Festival Days," was the longest work included. Here Beard has a more disrupted rhythm and skips around more frequently than in her other pieces. She is writing about the deterioration of a dear friend's health, her memories and heartbreak over the end of a long term relationship, and her nephew's childhood cancer diagnosis. I was fatigued by the end of the more frequent intertwining of several threads. This technique didn't serve her story as well here in my opinion.
I appreciate the way Beard puts her words together and some of her narrative really touches me, though her structure doesn't always work for me. I'm curious to go back to her earlier collection The Boys of My Youth to see if she employs this same technique throughout....more
"I'm a man of color . . . the red of miry clay, plowed up and planted to pass a legacy forward. There is the brown of spring floods rushing over a Sav"I'm a man of color . . . the red of miry clay, plowed up and planted to pass a legacy forward. There is the brown of spring floods rushing over a Savannah River shoal. There is the gold of ripening tobacco drying in the heat of summer's last breath. There are endless rows of cotton's cloudy white. My plumage is a kaleidoscopic rainbow of an eternal hope and the deepest blue of despair and darkness. All of these hues are me; I am, in the deepest sense, colored."
So begins J. Drew Lanham's memoir. Through this mostly chronological collection of essays he tells his story, growing up on a multitude of acres in South Carolina with plenty of time to explore and learn about his environment while mostly living with his grandmother who was deeply connected to nature. His father also had a deep knowing of the land and his animals and cultivated a small farm while teaching earth science at a local school.
While attending Clemson, initially studying engineering, Lanham realized he needed to follow his passion and switched his major to zoology. He tells of some of his experiences, sometimes frightening, being the only black man in his field and encountering white men and Confederate flags in areas not always friendly to African Americans. Lanham went on to earn his doctorate and to teach at Clemson. Along the way he began to wonder why so few men and women of color studied the natural sciences and how to inspire them to do so.
He suggests that one reason people of color, particularly those in the South, may not be engaged with nature is because land has always belonged to someone else, not to mention that it carried the blood of enslaved ancestors. He goes on to say:
“The wild things and places belong to all of us. So while I can’t fix the bigger problems of race of race in the United States—can’t suggest a means by which I, and others like me, will always feel safe—I can prescribe a solution in my own small corner. Get more of people of color ‘out there.’ Turn oddities into commonplace. The presence of more black birders, wildlife biologists, hunters, hikers, and fisherfolk will say to others that we, too, appreciate the warble of a summer tanager, the incredible instincts of a whitetail buck, and the sound of the wind in the tall pines. Our responsibility is to pass something on to those coming after. As young people of color reconnect with what so many of their ancestors knew—that our connections to the land run deep, like the taproots of mighty oaks; that the land renews and sustains us—maybe things will begin to change.”
As Lanham began to explore his passion outside of scientific data he was encouraged to write about his experiences. These writings grew into this book. I can see his growth as a writer through this collection. While uneven, his writing is often poetic, sometimes funny, always warm and frequently meditative. He has subsequently written a book of poetry, Sparrow Envy, which I hope to read soon.
The Home Place is a deeply felt homage to Lanham's family and to human connection to the land.
Walking into my local library a few days ago, I saw a librarian putting this work on the new books shelf. Remembering that my GR friend Candi had writWalking into my local library a few days ago, I saw a librarian putting this work on the new books shelf. Remembering that my GR friend Candi had written a positive review about it, I picked it up. First published in 1970 and re-issued in 2000, this book is a collection of Hahn's pieces that had been printed in the New Yorker between 1930 and 1970. Hahn is a very versatile writer and she covers bits of her varied and unusual (especially for a woman born in 1905) life. Hahn's conversational style of writing and her ability to laugh at herself brings these stories to life.
This collection opens with Hahn's remembrance of moving from St. Louis to Chicago in 1920. Anyone who has been or lived with a 15 year-old girl will recognize this person: "The misery was mine and mine alone. I was 15 and entitled to undisputed possession. Had I not been forced to leave St. Louis against my will? Wasn't I always being pushed around? No one but me had my sensitivity; no one but me knew how to suffer; the others were clods. It was clear that I had to run away."
Hahn wrote this vivid description of the landscape as she and her friend Jane set off on her first road trip in 1924: "Nevertheless, I still think with love of rich, wet color--the green of summer trees and the dark, glistening red clay of the road winding between them, distant blue hills across valleys that were as simply verdant as if a child's crayon had drawn them. There were cracks of lightning in the lowering sky, too far off to be frightening."
Hahn was born with a desire to wander and a willingness to adapt to the conditions around her. She had a gift for making friends who turned out to live in the places she wanted to visit. She traveled through the Congo and Japan and then lived in China for 8 years.
Her tales of the last few years in China, from the 1937 fighting in Shanghai to the beginnings of WWII had more of a sense of immediacy than her other travel stories. Naively she didn't initially grasp the implications of war. She began her tale of a trip to Nanking right at the beginning of the bombing, "Nobody said not to go."
Having learned how to survive as a single parent in war-torn Hong Kong, Hahn struggled to reintegrate with her family and U.S. life when she returned home "There is no doubt that people away from home collect unfortunate habits and forget to slough them off after returning, but--characteristically--I didn't think of this when I stepped off the Gripsholm late in 1943, an exchanged prisoner of war from Hong Kong."
For me these articles varied in impact. Hahn's writing is always brilliant. The earlier articles felt less detached and therefore resonated more with me. I enjoyed reading the adventures of this spirited, unconventional, independent woman from an earlier era....more
Maggie O'Farrell's I Am, I Am, I Am is an unusual memoir told in 17 essays. Within each of these stories, other stories emerge. These stories are not Maggie O'Farrell's I Am, I Am, I Am is an unusual memoir told in 17 essays. Within each of these stories, other stories emerge. These stories are not ordered chronologically, and my left brain had some difficulty at first with all the hops in time. Once I settled into the story frame, I was immediately engaged, mentally and emotionally. O'Farrell's vivid and descriptive writing depicts the tensions of the dramas, the intricacies of relationships, and the ferocity of maternal love.
While reading this book I thought of my own brushes with death -- the time I climbed out of my friend's bedroom window, the time I spun out on black ice, and so on-- events that have been pushed back in my closet of memories. This reflection brought me to realize how I have changed in response to these occurrences.
While O'Farrell captures the dangers she encounters, this book is equally about the life that she lives before and after these incidents.
One lovely passage from this memoir:
“When he took my hand he taught me something about the value of touch, the communicative power of the human hand. I didn't know, as I lay there, that I would think of him many times in the years ahead. When my son lay on a hospital bed, age four, with the raging fever of meningitis, I reached through the bodies of the attending doctors and held his slack, heated hand in both of mine. When my youngest child disappeared beneath the waves of the Mediterranean Sea and I had to leap in, haul her out, turn her upside-down so that the water drained from her lungs. Then all she and I could do was sit on the sand, wrapped in towels, contemplating what had almost happened, her small fingers wrapped in mine.”
This collection is a worthy celebration of every breath O'Farrell takes.
And thank you, Candi, for suggesting that I read this book. ...more
In this collection, Laymon explores what it means to be a black Mississippian, in all it's messiness. Mississippi is the blackest and poorest state in the nation. It is rich in literary, athletic, and musical culture. There is a strong history of violence against blacks and a strong history of Civil Rights activism. It is one very complex Southern state.
Laymon writes with raw vulnerability, drawing me in completely. He writes about hip hop, basketball, and writers. Most of all he writes about love--familial, fraternal, romantic, and of self. His grandmother is a huge influence in his life. He clearly states that she taught him how to love responsibly--to hold a person accountable when he does something wrong and to restrain from purposefully hurting (physically and emotionally) the ones we love. He writes about the violence black men inflict upon their women, about the harm their black neighbors are subjected to by the "worst of white folk." He writes about trauma endured over generations and the consequences of holding onto those traumas. And he tells us that we must be honest, tender, and responsible with everyone whom we purport to love
Laymon asks what do we owe to each other and what do we owe to ourselves? He suggests that we begin moving forward by looking at what's in front of us and by treating ourselves and others with respect and fairness and insisting on this same treatment in return.
I read these essays, a few each day, taking time to think about and process them. There's a lot here to consider. I will go back and read them again over the course of the next few weeks.
I'll leave you with Kiese's words from his author's note: "I am proud of myself for not giving up, for accepting help, for not drowning in humiliations of yesterday and the inevitable terror of tomorrow. That is the hardest sentence I've ever written."...more
I grew up in Baltimore where we straddle the line between north and south. I easily resonate with some of these stories: Tomato sandwiches really do cI grew up in Baltimore where we straddle the line between north and south. I easily resonate with some of these stories: Tomato sandwiches really do call for white fluffy bread which as a rule I do not like. I have visions of my grandfather and mother both claiming the last pickled pig's foot. And even now my husband slips a pocketknife into his right pocket as he gets dressed.
Some of Bragg's tales of nostalgia are universal: childhood trips to the beach, mothers and aunts with home permanents [or hair color], holidays.
A smile punctuated with chuckles and laughs was in place pretty much throughout most of my reading of these stories as Bragg tells us about his family, some of his travels, and life in the south.
And this man can write; he has a gift with words:
“... dodging potholes so old and deep that the devil must use them as a shortcut home...”
“Yet how lovely, to think that a person can live forever as long as one last bird sings in the dying light of one more day.”
When trying to get home for Thanksgiving, "The fact is, all I was rushing home to rediscover was not lost because the planes did not fly. It unfolded, warmly, deliciously, timelessly, just out of reach, and it really is enough to know a thing endures, lives on, just beyond your touch, your presence. You can live inside that, knowing that it does."
If you're not southern, Bragg may have you wishing you were.
Intimations is a perfect title for this short collection of essays, reflections, and literary sketches that Zadie Smith wrote over the course of the fIntimations is a perfect title for this short collection of essays, reflections, and literary sketches that Zadie Smith wrote over the course of the first few months of the pandemic. While not front and center in most of these pieces, the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement hover in the background throughout.
The thread that weaves these works together is the concept of difference and sameness; we are all in the same situation, and our circumstances differ. These particularities matter.
The essay that most strongly stood out to me was one of the "Screengrabs," her brilliant metaphor of contempt as a virus.
I am always impressed by Smith's writing. I am in awe of the consummate skill with which she ended each of these essays with the perfect sentence or paragraph to tie the piece together. She brilliantly succeeds at her stated aim to, ". . . give readers the thing I try to fight for myself, which is a space to think your own thoughts, whatever they might be."...more
In her introduction to this collection Helen Macdonald writes:
“Most of all I hope my work is about a thing that seems to me of the deepest possible imIn her introduction to this collection Helen Macdonald writes:
“Most of all I hope my work is about a thing that seems to me of the deepest possible importance in our present-day historical moment: finding ways to recognize and love difference.The attempt to see through eyes that are not your own. To understand that your way of looking at the world is not the only one. To think what it might mean to love those who are not like you. To rejoice in the complexity of things."
I believe she succeeds beautifully in this aim. Her 41 essays cover wide-ranging topics that are based in the natural world. They evoke thought and can be springboards for broader discussions. Macdonald's lyrical writing offers everything from meditations on nature to instruction on wildlife to nostalgic memories of her childhood explorations in nature to parallels with human behaviors.
I read these essays individually, taking time to think about one before going onto the next. I returned to several passages and my husband, daughter, mother, or whomever I talked with closest to reading some of these may be a little tired of hearing, "Listen to this . . ."
On a fun note, I read her essay on boxing hares just before reading about them in Atkinson's God in Ruins, so I knew exactly what Teddy was talking about.
“We need hard science to establish the rate and scale of these declines, to work out why it is occurring and what mitigation strategies can be brought into play. But we need literature, too; we need to communicate what the losses mean. I think of the wood warbler, a small citrus-coloured bird fast disappearing from British forests. It is one thing to show the statistical facts about this species’ decline. It is another thing to communicate to people what wood warblers are, and what that loss means, when your experience of a wood that is made of light and leaves and song becomes something less complex, less magical, just less, once the warblers have gone"
Some of these essayettes were hits and some were misses. Different gender, culture, age, personality? I had difficulty with Gay's stream of consciousnSome of these essayettes were hits and some were misses. Different gender, culture, age, personality? I had difficulty with Gay's stream of consciousness style; okay, I found it downright irritating at times. Once I got past that, it was a relatively easy read; and I think this is a book better taken in when read over time rather than in one or two sittings.
I have been cultivating daily delight for years, so picked this book up (belatedly) after hearing the rebroadcast of an NPR interview with Gay. Regardless of not connecting with several of these essayettes, time spent reading this book left me feeling upbeat....more
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