I know my way around France, speak the language, and have friends from the year my husband and I lived in the country.
Yet each time those glass tubes drop me at DeGaulle Airport’s door, I find myself switching not only languages, but personalities as well. My American persona just won’t do.
Liz Petry, author of “At Home Inside: A Daughter’s Tribute to Ann Petry”
http://www.upress.state.ms.us/books/1134 and
“Can Anything Beat White? A Black Family’s Letters” www.lizpetry.com
comments on her blog http://lizr128.wordpress.com/
Barbara Beckwith has done a brave and wonderful thing in writing What Was I Thinking?: Reflecting on Everyday Racism. I’ve long believed that no one in the United States is without racism. [...]
People of Color have spoken out against white privilege and racism for two centuries. It’s time for white people to listen and to act
In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy [...]
Join me in writing about your experiences growing up, with a focus on your awareness (or not) of race, racism, and white privilege.
Howard Zinn − historian, activist, and a member of the National Writers Union and the Boston Chapter for almost 20 years died on January 27, 2010. But his life and writing will inspire grassroots activists for many future generations.
Howard Zinn died Wednesday, January 26, 2010.
When I think about why Zinn is so important to me, I think of how he often describes his own experience, his own complicity, his own gradual understanding of “what’s going on” (eg as WWII Air Force bomber, bombing people he couldn’t see, including the first napalm drops ever [...]
“Watch the sky,” says the man in the battered jeep, chin jerking skyward. “That canyon’s no place to be in a rain.” He switches into 4-wheel drive and guns his jeep along the sand-and-slickrock track toward the nearest paved road 10 miles away.
A friend of mine meditates in the classical way. For hours, she sits quietly or walks in slow and measured steps. I can’t stay still for long. But I meditate in my own way — at high speed. While my friend folds her legs under her, and follows her breath, I race around a cold [...]
At a recent literary event, where I milled about with writers, editors and agents, any one of whom could help advance my career, I realized, after being asked by several people “What do you write?”, that I’d forgotten to prepare a “sound bite.”
You’ll probably get a go-ahead for an article by phone. Make sure you ask — is this an assignment, or will I be writing on speculation? If it’s an assignment, you’ll want to know, before you get off the phone,
