Writing in Real Life

Christmas Letters

2011-12-24T12:15:00.000-08:00

Jesmyn Ward's 2011 National Book Award in Fiction acceptance speech

2011-12-06T10:23:00.000-08:00

Nikky Finney's 2011 National Book Award in Poetry acceptance speech

2011-12-06T09:48:00.000-08:00

When Images are better than Words

2011-12-05T10:30:00.001-08:00

When I started this blog, I included posts of cartoons I drew about my writing life. As I spend this school year away from my little ones, I've indulged my interest in drawing a bit more. The second picture is one I drew this semester and that I'll give to my son for Christmas. I looked at an old picture of him, tried to draw it and although it doesn't really look like him, I like the result anyway.

The top picture was drawn by my daughter and I've framed it for her as a Christmas present. I'm her mom but let me be the first to say that I think she's brilliant.

I realize that I'm becoming more interested in visual images as a form of expression which may explain the ridiculous amount of movies I've watched since July. I also had to teach a course that studies film as text so that's part of it, too. While I'll never stop loving words or needing to read eloquent writing like that found in James Baldwin's essays, I'm really digging this experimentation with visual technique. I think my technique will eventually fall somewhere between graphic/animation and realism. The process of drawing feels less exhausting than writing, and more rewarding as the image slowly emerges from the page.

Carlos

2011-12-03T15:13:00.001-08:00

So, I've been watching a LOT of movies lately. I won't embarrass myself by giving a count (although I know what it is. I need a life. For real.) I've seen some really great dramas, documentaries, and comedies. But nothing compares to this 5 hour movie about renowned Venezuelan terrorist, Ilich Ramirez Santos a.k.a. Carlos the Jackal. The movie is based on a French documentary of Carlos which aired in 1995 and is included (in French, no subtitles) as the fourth disc in the collection.

I have not been this amazed by a dramatic narrative since The Wire. I could not stop watching. It was also interesting to view this story of terrorism-in-the-name-of-fighting-imperialism given the current nonviolent liberation movements happening here and abroad.

And, oh my god, Edgar Ramirez, the actor who plays Carlos is unbelievably, unforgettably sexy. An interview with Edgar Ramirez about the film can be found here.

Patriarchy is a Helluva Drug

2011-12-03T14:38:00.001-08:00

What is up with Gloria Cain and Vanessa Long "standing by their men"?!? Long has decided to go ahead with her divorce after first telling the press that she was filing, and then hours later saying that, No, she wasn't filing. Now she's filing again. But her flip-flop is disheartening to watch because it suggests that she's negotiating with her husband's camp which is only concerned with Bishop Long's reputation, wealth, and power. Gloria Cain, too, had to stand, disgraced, on a dais with her husband in order to save his pecuniary interests post-campaign.

Yeah, I know that both women may have their own financial interests in not destroying their husbands' careers, but THAT makes me even sadder because of what it says about the imbalance of power in their relationships.

Photo of Herman Cain courtesy of The Guardian
Photo of Eddie Long courtesy of EURWEB

Unbowed

2011-09-27T13:47:00.000-07:00

Unbelievably sad news that Wangari Maathai has passed on. I read her memoir earlier this year and was moved by her activism which included imprisonment, but also by her stories of being a mother, an academic, and someone who survived a rather ugly divorce. There is no way to talk about her strength and vision without resorting to hyperbole. May she rest in peace, and may we never forget her.

Reading at Antigone Books

2011-09-23T11:47:00.000-07:00

I will be reading on Friday, October 14th at 7 pm at Antigone Bookstore in Tucson. I'm reading with Meikil Berry as part of the Other Voices Women's Reading Series. Come and check us out.

A lovely little film: George Washington

2011-09-19T17:43:00.000-07:00

I came across this gorgeous movie by chance. Look for a post about the film this week.

9-11

2011-09-11T15:49:00.000-07:00

Here is a remembrance wall that I passed today near 15th St. and Union Ave. It was a moveable wall covered with black cloth that was placed in an empty parking lot. A simple but moving tribute.

Pacific Northwest-ing

2011-09-11T15:41:00.000-07:00

I am in Tacoma, Washington for two years, teaching at the University of Puget Sound. In addition to living in a new location, I am without family for the first year and it will be interesting to see how this affects my writing. No more excuses! I'm hoping that I will write a lot and be inspired by the landscape, the ocean and new colleagues. These are pictures of Mt. Rainier taken from a Target parking lot, a pier on the sound, and the sidewalk on Union where I like to take morning walks.

Remembering Velma

2011-09-10T10:17:00.000-07:00

I am at the age where the death of friends and relatives is not shocking, but that doesn’t make the loss any easier. Today is my godmother’s funeral at Mayflower Congregational Church in Detroit. As I try to make peace with this reality, here is what I want you to know about her:

Her name is Velma Lewis Ward.

She was born December 27, 1929 in Salem, Michigan.

She was not raised by and did not know her parents.

She was raised on a farm by a black man, born in 1892, who was a gentle spirit and deaf later in his life. Everyone called him "Gramps."

Aunt Velma milked cows as a girl.

She attended the University of Michigan and Wayne State University.

She had freckles, wore glasses, and had thick, beautiful hair.

She is survived by one child, a son, whom she raised alone.

As a girl she wanted to be a doctor.

A counselor at her high school, Northville High, suggested a career in cosmetology instead.

Aunt Velma was one of the first black women to get a PhD in biochemistry from Wayne State University School of Medicine.

She thought that the failure to use black people in medical trials had negative effects on our health and the diagnosis of illness in our community.

She said “molecules don’t give you the whole picture” of a person.

She became a Medical Anthropologist.

She did research on coronary disease in older African Americans and contributed greatly to understanding the role of ethnicity in the health care experience.

She never talked about her accomplishments.

She had friends from all walks of life.

She believed in astrology.

She didn’t really care for the shape of her nose.

She was a feminist.

She authored or assisted in numerous scientific publications.

She told me as Capricorns we were susceptible to problems with our joints.

Upon seeing my oldest child as a baby, she remarked, “He’s perfect. Keep that formula!”

She researched the cultural impact of the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill hearings.

She was a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority.

She was the first African American to address the Society of Biological Psychiatry.

She had an uncanny ability to remember many facts, data, details, and dates from the recent past and decades before. Her son has this ability also.

She was a member of The Royal Society of Chemistry as a Chartered Chemist.

She lived for decades in a house on Littlefield in Detroit.

She loved music.

She said in a 2004 interview, “Whatever talents you have, you need to use to the best of your ability for humanity.”

She mentored and influenced many younger people.

Her voice was soft and you had to lean in to hear her when she spoke.

She left this earth on September 2, 2011.

It's National Poetry Month!

2011-04-04T11:19:00.000-07:00

I'll be reading this Thursday at Chandler-Gilbert Community College with Jimmy Berlin and Jacquelyne Kibler as part of the college's celebration of National Poetry Month. Come if you can. Pecos campus, 7:00 p.m. Let's celebrate the word!

On Privacy + Annoying Little Dogs

2011-03-28T12:56:00.000-07:00

A friend posted this status update a few weeks ago: Is it weird to be on someone's Facebook page when they walk up??

The answers she received were overwhelmingly "yes," but I expect that soon, the majority of responses to that question will soon be "no" or "meh. who cares." This is the age that we're in, we inhabit both real and virtual worlds, all of us celebrities with our own fans, followers, and headshots. Why shouldn't we expect people to read about us online, to see what we're up to and who we've posed with in pictures? In fact, shouldn't we be flattered that they're thinking of us at all?

Thinking of someone is one thing. Looking for all their info is stalking them from afar.

Not that I don't do it, too, but it does concern me. I don't worry about my own privacy--I'm grown--but I do worry about my tween who is on XBox Kinect with people he's never met, people who live in different countries all over the world. My kid knows enough not to play video games with adults (and adult XBoxers don't like playing with kids anyway) but he doesn't understand yet how this anonymous interaction could come back to bite him in the butt.

For example, I've witnessed him engage in heated competitions, including smack-talk, with other game players. I've overheard he and his friends sit in front of the tv screen and lie to the other players about their names and ages. What happens when an insult is taken personally and someone hacks into your XBox account (is this possible?) or finds out who you are and starts to harass you? Stalking from afar (what we do when we google others) is one thin line from harassing from afar.

Not that old school bullying can't happen. (I received a typed letter in the mail the other day. No return address. It read: "Dog Owner, Put a lid on that little dog of yours. Please. And welcome to the hood.")

The difference is that I probably know the idiot who sent that letter. The letter writer is someone who lives in my neighborhood.

But who are the cranks and weirdos who are watching us unseen? This is one of the real dangers, I think, of so much of our information being accessible to the public at large.

Not that Facebook cares about our privacy.

So much of who we are today is how we present ourselves through different media. You can ask any real celebrity what the price is for that kind of access.

Pictures from Egypt

2011-02-11T05:47:00.001-08:00

Credit: Emilio Meorenatti/Associated Press

Credit: Dylan Martinez/Reuters

Credit: Chris Hondros/Getty Images

These photos are taken from the front page of today's New York Times online. My students are writing ekphrastic poetry based on war images. These pictures of a people's revolution surely inspire words.

Tumbleweed

2011-02-02T05:51:00.001-08:00

As the rest of the nation freezes under snow and ice, Arizona has cold winds and these things blowing all around.

After Tunisia - Writers Respond

2011-01-28T08:46:00.000-08:00

The Guardian has ten Arab writers respond to the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. Al Jazeera reports on the newest uprisings in Egypt and Yemen. And the blog, Pan-African News Wire,writes about demonstrations in Algeria and other North African countries.

AWP Conference 2011

2011-01-27T11:22:00.000-08:00

I will be in D.C. next week at The Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference. The district just got hit with another snowstorm so travelling that way should be interesting. If you're there, come check out these panels where I'll be contributing:

Friday, Feb. 4th 3:00 - 4:15:

Empire Ballroom
Omni Shoreham Hotel, West Lobby

F204. African American Writers on Obama. (Lita Hooper, Renee Simms, Tara Betts, Antoinette Brim, Demetrice Worley) 44 on 44: Forty-Four African American Writers on the 44th President of the United States is an anthology of poetry, essay, and creative nonfiction based on the election of the first African American president of the U.S. The anthology includes contributors’ reflections of the historic election of Barack Obama. Several contributors will read from the anthology and engage in a discussion with one another and the audience.

Saturday, Feb. 5th 1:30 - 2:45:

Virginia C Room
Marriott Wardman Park, Lobby Level

S180. [WITS Alliance]—We Were All Poets in the 3rd Grade: What Happened? (Jack McBride, Janine Joseph, Mary Rechner, Renee Simms, Giuseppe Taurino, Jeanine Walker) WITS Writers will discuss their paths as writers and teachers, from when they fell in love with writing, how they were discouraged or made to feel anxious about the process, and how they subsequently came back to it. Investigating why K-12 students go from a willingness to engage creative writing (and all it entails: vulnerability, creativity, risk) to being afraid or indifferent, panelists will explore best teaching practices for re-engaging students and collaborating with classroom teachers.

Books, Books and an Interview

2011-01-26T12:05:00.000-08:00

Harlem is Nowhere by author Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts is the first of a trilogy about African-Americans and utopia.

The historical novel Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez has gotten rave reviews and is now out in paperback.

Tayari Jones' third novel, Silver Sparrow, comes out this spring, but she's gifting one to a lucky winner on her blog.

And Junot Diaz talks about writing and ethnicity to the Mumbai Mirror.

Michelle Obama's Dress

2011-01-26T12:00:00.001-08:00

Rachel Roy in Accra
Originally uploaded by Abena

I absolutely loved the grey dress that Michelle Obama wore at the State of the Union address last night. Loved even more that the dress was by designer Rachel Roy (pictured) who is the ex-wife of Damon Dash...who was a co-founder with Jay-Z of Roc-A-Fella Records and Rocawear clothing line. We got a hip-hop First Family for real.

Rewriting the Draft (four years later?!?)

2011-01-24T08:35:00.000-08:00

I spent a good part of the weekend revising an essay that will be published this spring. I first started writing it 4 years ago. I wasn't really sure what I was writing about back then, but I knew that I'd had a relationship with a woman that had changed my life and I wanted to tell that story.

The first draft was emotional and rambling. I shared it with friends who were writers and avid readers. One friend sent lots of notes and really good suggestions. She kept saying that she was moved by it. That was enough encouragement for me to feel like I had something to further develop.

I let the draft sit for a few months before I picked it up again.

I'm always amazed at how clearly I see my writing after I let it rest for a while. When I return to a piece after a hiatus, I can tell right away what's working and what isn't. That is never true for me when I spend days in a row revising and editing. For me, working too long and hard on the same piece obscures my vision. I've ruined good drafts that way.

When I read the essay again, I liked a lot of it, but the introduction wasn't working and the themes were not fully developed. I took another stab at it. When I finished that draft, I sent it out to literary journals who accept nonfiction. No one was interested. When I read the draft again, after it had been rejected, I decided that it really wasn't the type of essay that a literary journal would publish. The tone was not literary and the subject matter was popular. It was also an essay that would be of special interest to women, especially mothers.

I sent a pitch to an online magazine. The editor seemed interested and asked that I forward it. I sent the essay to her and waited. Nothing happened. I read through the essays that this site published and realized that my piece, although too commercial for the lit journals, was probably too serious for this site. The essayists writing for this site were young, hip, and kind of snarky. I could never write the way that they did.

Then I purposely forgot about the essay. This is the hardest thing for me to do. I feel as much pressure as the next writer to publish and publish often, but taking a pause is a crucial part of my process. I've found that when I just live my life, I'm inevitably observing the world and thinking deeply about issues, even when I'm just walking the dog. When I just live my life, something I hear or see will "click" and remind me that "This is what you were trying to write about in that essay." Then I'll feel a new sense of urgency to return to the draft and sharpen its focus.

I've learned that my first drafts are usually about releasing the emotion I feel about an issue. The intellectual piece does not come until later for me, and it doesn't come at all if I try to force it. I have to do ordinary things like work and deal with relatives. When I interact with other people, I see situations that are extraordinary and that are the stuff of literature. That's when I understand the theme that wants to emerge in my work.

So the intellectual piece for this essay eventually revealed itself and I understood that I was writing about ideology--when to trust it and when to let it go. I revised some more and then sent it to two places, a publication where the readers are mostly educated women and mothers, and as an unsolicited email to an editor at a bigwig monthly magazine. The bigwig editor never answered, but the women's magazine was interested.

The editors thought that I had two distinct narratives going on and wanted me to get rid of one of them. This was a revelation for me. I thought I had one major plot line and a sub-plot that helped clarify the main story. But once I read the essay again, they were absolutely right.

They also told me I needed more scenes and so I added that.

Once I'd made those revisions, they accepted the submission. Then came the first round of edits, the ones I spent this weekend incorporating into the latest revision. There are two editors and their comments are in two different-colored fonts. They made suggestions about the title, the opening, the closing, whether or not to name my children in the essay, they asked for more background information and, once again, told me that I needed more scenes.

To say that I'm grateful for their help is an understatement. I feel so lucky to have the chance to learn from them. I always tell my students that they need a community of writers to give them feedback, but I also know that good editors, the kind that get what you're trying to say and that push you to write your best, are rare. So I've spent several days trying to live up to their expectations.

I've also learned two things about my relationship to creative nonfiction. The first thing is that I'm avoiding scenes in my essays because I believe that my memory is unreliable. I think, How can I write dialogue that's not 100% accurate? This isn't completely true. I really need to get over that.

The second thing is that I fret over how much of my family's personal life I should share in my writing. I will use pseudonyms for my children in this essay, to protect them, even though the essay really isn't about them at all. Still, I feel like I'm straddling a tricky line by even mentioning them in my work. I'm now thinking about whether I'll ever include my kids in writing which I publish in the future.

Lauryn Hill Speech-2000 PT.2

2011-01-22T16:51:00.000-08:00

Lauryn Hill Speech from 2000-Part One

2011-01-22T16:48:00.000-08:00

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

2011-01-19T11:30:00.000-08:00

This memoir about Eastern versus Western parenting strategies has been getting a ton of publicity. The smartest response I've read is over at Buddhafun (and not just because I love Stephanie Han and her writing, though I do.)

Here's a snippet of what Stephanie had to say:

it depends what you want from your kids and how you see the world. Is your priority to make them economically successful and have them achieve social status? Then her methods might not be so bad.

Will it yield children who are good spouses, community oriented, or who might meander down another more unique path in life? Nah. Not necessarily. Depends. Maybe if they meet other ballbusting types who tow the social line of good behavior. Yeah, then it can work out. But let's be frank--Margaret Mead is not born of this stuff, neither actually is someone like Baryshinkov, or hey, let's name him--Einstein. (That said, how many children actually become those types of figures? Not many...) Actually, what is yielded from Chua's method, I hate to say it, but let's be frank--is a kind of bourgeois mediocrity within a certain socioeconomic group. Good schools. Good extracurrics, the right holidays and camps, the right understanding of good wine and an opera. But this does not necessarily yield the kid that stands up for the weaker ones, the person who stands by the environment, votes for his community, and has the guts to do the right thing, simply to do the right thing.

Check out the rest of the blog essay here

{look for title at the end of post}

2011-01-16T07:24:00.001-08:00

What a privilege it is to write and to teach writing.

I'm sitting here in my pale green bedroom with candles lit looking at my syllabus and the dozens of poetry collections that clutter my bed. Can you tell that I'm in heaven? Few things excite me more than a discussion about why certain words of a poem, that have been put together just so, are damn near perfect.

And that's why I've been disappointed by recent discussions about the futility of language. According to this Slate article, David Foster Wallace was driven by this question. And the shooter last week in Tucson, Jared Loughner, wondered if words mattered. I don't have a problem with posing that question or exploring the answers, but I will never agree that words are meaningless. There's too much evidence that words matter--a whole lot. Look at the recent rewriting of Huckleberry Finn or the parts left out of the Constitution as it was read on the floor of Congress. Think about the times that someone's words made you cry or question what you believe. Language, like music, is one of the many ways that we connect spirit to spirit and mind to mind.

[I'm reading over what I just wrote. I'm noticing the biblical allusions from me, a very secular girl. This is because when I say I believe in language that belief is religious in nature. So let's go all the way. Let's title this "In the Beginning there was the Word."]

Arizona Writers for Justice

2011-01-12T11:00:00.000-08:00

On Monday, January 17th, I will join a group of writers to read poems, essays and stories that speak to the true legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. There is a range of writers and styles involved and the readings promise to be funny, inspired, and just plain good. The writers are:

Venita Blackburn

Myrlin Hepworth

Ryan Holden

Michelle J. Martinez

Rae Paris

Fernando Perez

Annette Sexton-Ruiz

Renee Simms

Please come out and support the reading. It's free, and it starts at 7 pm at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe.

A poem by e.e. cummings

2010-11-20T14:56:00.000-08:00

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond

by e. e. cummings

somewhere i have never travelled,glady beyond

any experience,your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look will easily unclose me

though i have closed myself as fingers,

you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens

(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and

my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,

as when the heart of this flower imagines

the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals

the power of your intense fragility:whose texture

compels me with the colors of its countries,

rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes

and opens;only something in me understands

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

Q&A: Isabel Wilkerson

2010-11-15T22:06:00.000-08:00

Quoteables: "The Way We Learn to Look"

2010-11-07T17:29:00.000-08:00

There's a wonderful conversation about poetry and political realities in the latest issue of Gulf Coast. The conversation begins with several poets discussing the Deep Water Horizon explosion and the soft language that was used to describe that accident:

Fred Marchant: The "innocence" of the word "spill" is a political construct or artifact. I don't yet have the exact word for what this event is, but it is more than a spill, is closer to a bleed and a wound, and is certainly representative of a deep violation of our compact with each other and our compact with life on the planet.

And then a little later, this from Patricia Smith:

Strange that I became a poet, since I was raised not to trust language or, for that matter, anything I was seeing. I was raised by a woman who was convinced that the moon landing was staged in an Arizona desert. Growing up on the west side of Chicago--the part of town everyone told you to stay away from--language was used not so much to communicate, but to keep us in our place. The "national insurance" my parents paid every week was nothing but a white, outstretched hand. Our "modern urban development" was a slum, plain and simple. I learned early that soft language almost always hid hard edges.

So I don't look at the pretty pictures, or even the murky shots of the underwater spew. I look beneath everything I hear. That's where I find the verbs and nouns that nobody wants to use.

--from "The Way We Learn to Look: A conversation with Nick Flynn, Brenda Hillman, Dorianne Laux, Fred Marchant, Laura Mullen, and Patricia Smith," Gulf Coast, Winter/Spring 2011.

Can You Help Me Get Published? from Xtranormal

2010-11-05T20:33:00.000-07:00

Poetry: Christian Campbell

2010-11-05T20:02:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Carribean poet Christian Campbell who won the Aldeburgh first collection prize for poetry on Friday! I was just reading his collection, Running the Dusk. Here is a poem from that collection:

Legba

A well-loved lit classic
packed in each bag, and a Harvard
sweatshirt to match the Pakistani
passport -- Iqbal goes first, catching
a flight to France. Then me,
in a tie and soft pants, khaki hat
to keep my head tame. We chat
clipped and colonial, like our tutors,
grinning out Oxford with a nod.
At immigration I put on airs
and styles, let the maleness growl
without teeth. Hold my chest
with untouchable height. All like
a politician, a Sidney Poitier,
an old Bahamian man. I look
only ahead and walk straight-back,
like my grandfather. Speak like he spoke
to foreigners, in his best moods,
he would put on the mouths
of all the Englishmen he'd met,
playing the Queen and how
she gave him his MBE -- Pa.
There, reciting and reciting Blake,
until he fell down blank and silent
as any road in Nassau
the morning after junkanoo.

--copyright Christian Campbell 2010 from Running the Dusk (Peepal Tree Press)

My Year in Writing

2010-11-05T17:26:00.000-07:00

In February, I wrote about my son's challenges with writing. He was not at all interested in writing or reading. His grades in these areas were not good and everyone in the house was frustrated. Amir was in fourth grade at the time. Things have changed since then. He's now in fifth grade and he received an A in reading on his first report card. He's enjoying the books that he reads for class. On December 9th, he'll represent his class in the school-wide spelling bee and if he wins that, he will represent his school at the Arizona spelling bee. My child who brought home a report card last year with Cs and a D is now on the honor roll.

One of the differences between this year and last is his teacher, Mr. Z. Mr. Z is one of those master-teachers you encounter only a couple times in your life, if you're lucky. He is compassionate, energetic, funny, smart, inspiring. And he's a man. This is only the second time that Amir has had a man as a teacher and that's not okay if you believe, as I do, that gender matters with role models. Mr. Z recommends books to Amir that a young boy on the cusp of his teen years can relate to, like Wringer by Jerry Spinelli which is about peer pressure and violence. The book that the class is reading now, Maniac Magee (also by Spinelli and a Newberry Award winner), is about a young boy who likes to read. It's also about race relations. Amir's class has discussions about race and racial stereotypes. I don't think it's a coincidence that Amir is interested in reading and writing at a time when he's reading literature that's relevant to his life.

I've talked about Ava's writing this year in a recent post. She's reading and writing up a storm. She too has an incredible teacher.

And my writing? I've been getting it in. I promised myself to focus more on my own goals this year, and I did. I grabbed moments to write whenever I could and I stopped feeling guilty about it. I learned to say, "Shut the door, I'm writing" and "Stop talking to me, can't you see I'm writing?" or "Ain't shit funny. Interrupt me one more time and see what happens." Just kidding with the last quote. I would never talk like that to my family....

Most journals now have an online submission manager and that makes submitting my work so much easier. With just a few clicks you can submit a story. I clicked a lot this year. I also invested in getting professional feedback on my manuscript from a fiction editor. I applied for grants and residencies. I placed a few stories, a poem, and essays. I'll be reading my poetry at Tempe Center for the Arts in April 2011 as part of a series moderated by Catherine Hammond. I'll be reading my essay about Obama as part of a panel at AWP in February. And I'll teach creative writing at Chandler-Gilbert Community College in Spring 2011. CGCC has a new and exciting Creative Writing program headed by Patrick Michael Finn.

So here's to the Writing Gods. May they continue to watch over us.

Friday Fun

2010-11-05T17:16:00.000-07:00

For (Stuffed) Colored Girls from Wayne Brady

The Yale Anthology of Rap

2010-11-03T02:03:00.000-07:00

I have to admit that I'm dorky enough to be really excited by this anthology released last week. I relate to hip-hop through language more than beats; I remember writing down all the lyrics to Grandmaster Flash's "The Message" just so I could see the words on paper and study the narrative.

So an anthology that professes to examine the poetic tradition of rap sounds good to me.

If this review in NY Magazine is right, YAR is different from other books on hip-hop (and there are tons) because it focuses on textual analysis of lyrics and not on music or personalities. Funny how the author, after reading the anthology, concludes that Big Daddy Kane is the best rapper (poet) ever. I'm wondering how the lyrics of Biggie and Lauryn Hill will rank in the canon and hoping that I can finally understand the lyrical power of Jay-Z which is lost on me when I listen to his music.

A Few Lit Links

2010-10-26T06:35:00.000-07:00

The case against becoming an English professor? Tayari Jones responds.

Anis Shivani says MFA programs are corrupt.

From 2008: Charles Johnson on Black narrative in the 21st century.

Helena Andrews looks at the Hollywood history of Ntozake's For Colored Girls.

Writing (and reading) for Family

2010-10-17T14:50:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year I decided I wanted to write something for my grandmother on her 100th birthday in September. I thought whatever I wrote could be private, for her to read and remember, but as the party planning got more elaborate, I was placed on the schedule of events. I'd be reading "Reflections." When I learned that there would be an audience I tweaked what I'd written and then I filed it away. That was in July.

I need about two months between finishing a piece and looking at it again for revision. By then I'm less attached to what I wrote the first time. It just so happened that in August and September, I was so busy with work and family that all I had time to do was read it a second time. I didn't make any revisions. I told myself that the piece was fine. I promised myself I'd look at it again when we got to Atlanta for the party. I pictured myself on the hotel bed with my laptop, making changes, reading it aloud. Of course, that never happened.

I was anxious, then, because I had not revised my "reflections." There would be 300 people in attendance, and a lot of them would be church folks that I didn't want to offend or bore. Let's be real, a churchgoing audience is used to a different type of rhetoric than you find in a quiet essay. I guess I was also nervous that my father, brothers, nephew, sister-in-law, cousins, uncles, aunties would be there to listen. I'd never shared with them a personal essay that I'd written.

I also kept replaying a scene from the movie, "Death at a Funeral" starring Chris Rock. In it, Rock plays a writer who's been working on a novel for forever. He's a serious brooding type with little sense of humor. At his father's funeral, Rock reads a eulogy which is filled with the kind of flat and boring historical facts that just won't fly with black folks at a funeral. I'd filled my essay for my grandmother with flat historical facts. I mean, how else do you talk about living for an entire century?

And then, at the party other people got up and started saying the same historical stuff that I'd written. Even if it wasn't exactly the same in content it was in spirit. Unoriginal ideas are not something we writers strive for.

I started revising in my head. I began mentally cutting and pasting. "The beginning was boring," I thought. I'd start with the third paragraph.

Reflections were scheduled at the close of the event. There were two readers of reflections: me and one of my grandmother's friends. The friend was from a senior citizens group that meets to play bingo and such. This gray-haired woman was exactly the type of phenomenal speaker you never want to follow. She had no notes. She was funny. She told personal stories about my grandmother that were endearing and specific. I am certain that the words she spoke were mostly spontaneous. She was brilliant.

When it was my turn, I walked up to the front with my two typed pages. I decided right there not to read the first page. Instead I just talked. i told them how I'd fretted about this reading. How I'd researched all these historical facts which were not really relevant. I told them that I was happy I'd done the research because it helped me understand the dilemma I faced when talking about my grandmother. On the one hand, I was reading about an America pre-voting rights for women, pre-civil rights for blacks, and a world where a lot of ugly things were happening. On the other hand, there was Rubie and her constant laughter, her flowering garden, her delicious pound cakes. I told them that it was hard to reconcile these very different images without conceding that maybe Mama Rubie's life was blessed. I admitted that "blessed" is not a word I often use but that it seemed appropriate to describe a woman who thrived despite such low expectations.

I then shared a few personal stories and read from the end of the essay. This was a section of the essay that was written more like a prose poem. I got a little emotional as I read, but it was an emotional day.

I heard Toni Morrison say once that the revising is never done, not even after publication. I'd add that the revision process continues even as you walk to the mic.

New Blog!

2010-10-17T14:33:00.000-07:00

Check out a new blog I've started, The So-Called Middle. It will document middle class life using mostly photos, videos, and quotes.

The Nature of Power + Pimps?

2010-10-10T11:17:00.000-07:00

A new documentary opened this weekend in select cities. The film is about the nature of power, geopolitics, and self-empowerment....I think. I'm not exactly sure what Ghetto Physics will be about, but the trailer has me curious. It opens in Tempe, AZ on October 15th at the Harkins Valley Art Theater.

The trailer mentions the U.S. invasion of Iraq which made me think about President Bush for nearly an hour on this Sunday morning. I thought I'd share this video of "Great Moments in Presidential Speeches" provided to you by David Letterman:

Writing at Age Five

2010-10-10T09:21:00.000-07:00

Do you remember what you were writing at age five? I have homemade books that I created and school papers that I wrote from about age eight, but I don't recall my first scribblings of words.

Ava, our resident kindergartener, is a furious scribbler right now. In one year, it's gone from symbols:

to the random use of letters (on a homemade telescope):

to the creation of menus:

birthday cards:

copying words seen on art:

notes to her brother:

random thoughts:

and this morning, the creation of a computer keyboard:

BTW, Ava is NOT spelling "zucchini" or writing notes to her brother on her own. She has the initial idea, and then asks for help with the spelling.

Grading Papers. Will Return Soon.

2010-10-06T02:30:00.001-07:00

Sign of summer
Originally uploaded by DawndiQBU

It's that time of the year when I start to realize that summer is truly gone and I'm somewhere in the middle of a fall semester juggling many deadlines. So far, so good. The trick, for me, is staying on top of 1) courses that I teach; 2) outreach curriculum & events; 3) Ava's classroom schedule; 4) Amir's classroom schedule; and 5) my personal writing deadlines. I posted a few months ago that I purchased a large calendar on which I scribble brightly colored deadlines. I have so many dates to remember, they sometimes are written sideways or bleed into the next day's box. The calendar is probably illegible to everyone but me. When I look at it (it's this big, flimsy plastic board held up by magnets on the refrigerator) I wonder how I landed this deep in middle American kitsch.

Amir is on fall intercession right now, so there are no reports or papers that he's writing for the next few weeks. It has started to rain, finally, for days in a row. The break from 100+ heat makes it easier to concentrate on everything that begs to get done.

The gray skies and rain, and the witty students I'm teaching this semester have stoked my creative juices. In other words, in the middle of all these dates and deadlines, I am finding time to write! Of course all this busy-ness and inspiration means that blogging has fallen off, but I expect to post more once I have finished grading my first round of papers.

Seen on the Train

2010-09-15T14:29:00.001-07:00

96th Street subway, uptown side, Oct 2009 - 09
Originally uploaded by Ed Yourdon

Titles that I've seen people reading on the light rail:

Crash Proof: How to Profit From the Coming Economic Collapse by Peter D. Schiff and John Downes

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

Outcasts United: An American Town, A Refugee Team, and One Woman's Quest to Make a Difference by Warren St. John

R.I.P. Varnette Honeywood

2010-09-15T13:01:00.001-07:00

Los Angeles artist Varnette Honeywood has passed away. You may remember her work was featured on The Cosby Show. Safe travels Ms. Honeywood.

Hello, Can Anybody Hear Me?

2010-09-14T02:14:00.000-07:00

Last week I read responses that my students had written to assigned readings. One of the prompt questions was, "Who is the audience for this essay?" We'd talked in class about how you determine an author's intended audience. We'd talked about by noting where the work was first published, looking at the language, understanding the writer's themes. Still, when it came time to answer this question, most students wrote "African-Americans" for the essay written by a black man and "Latinos" for an essay written by a Mexican-American woman. I was a little shocked by their answers.

Both essays were literacy narratives that explored the writers' relationship with written and spoken language. I'm pretty sure the authors thought that they were writing about universal themes that many people could relate to. Yet, here was a group of college freshmen who believed that these writers spoke to an audience that was determined strictly by race.

* * * * *

Driving home at night I'm listening to the radio. Terry Gross, the host of "Fresh Air" announces that Jonathan Franzen will be the guest on her show. I let out a big sigh. I've heard the latest Twitterverse controversy about Franzen: Does he get unnecessary hype because he is a man? I'm tired. I've been working for twelve hours. I'm a woman writer that has yet to publish a book. Franzen is everywhere in the media. I'm thinking that this interview will be a downer.

Before I can change the station, I hear Gross ask him about the controversy. The way she phrases her question makes me cringe. She says something like "as if you're responsible for your success." Franzen responds. He says that the criticism of him has not been in the form of ad hominem attacks. He says it is a feminist critique about how we read and understand certain writers. He says he agrees with the critique.

* * * * *

I'm reading a review of Freedom that talks about Franzen's sharp insights into human nature. The example used is this quote from the book, "Then she waited, with parted lips and a saucy challenge in her eyes, to see how her presence--the drama of being her--was registering."

I remember that Terry Gross also quoted this description during her interview. I read and re-read the quote. I want to see the magic that they all see. It is hard to judge an excerpt without the context, but I just don't notice anything exceptional about the prose or even the mocking use of the word "saucy." It's a funny description of a character, but is it an acute observation into human nature? What if it appeared in a romance novel? Would the observation then be called brilliant?

* * * * *

Carleen Brice writes on her blog about the release of Getting to Happy, Terry McMillan's sequel to Waiting to Exhale. She remembers how McMillan's success inspired her to become an author. One commenter recalls how many people of different races were reading WTE when it first came out. I remember that, too. I remember that the person who first told me about the book was a girlfriend who is white.

* * * * *

I'm reading an essay by the poet Sarah Vap. It's about how readers and writers connect. In it, she writes, "If everything goes well in the reading of a poem--that is, if I have arrived at the poem with an opening in my heart and my mind to my own historical language, and if the author has written the poem with an opening in his or her heart and mind to their historical language--and if bridges have been crossed by both of us so that we intersect somewhere on the big continuum of language--then, I believe, the author and I will meet in the space of the poem. And in this meeting, our private histories with language will change forever. And so, because of this, we will also have to change."

I'm realizing how much baggage or "historical language" we all bring to reading any piece of writing. It really is a miracle when we create words that connect with an audience.

R.I.P Ron Walters

2010-09-12T08:16:00.000-07:00

Dr. Ronald Walters, the former campaign manager for Jesse Jackson during both of his presidential bids, passed away on Friday, September 10th. Walters, who had a thoughtful and low-key rhetorical style, was was a distinguished scholar in African-American studies and political science and the author of several books. Here's a link to a video of Walters speaking to Bill Moyers in 2007 about Barack Obama's presidential campaign. Thanks to Dr. Mack H. Jones for the news of Dr. Walter's passing.

For Colored Girls...the Movie

2010-09-10T10:08:00.000-07:00

So here is a promotional photo for Tyler Perry's cinematic version of For Colored Girls... that's been floating around the internet. Tyler, if you're listening, there are a whole bunch of women artists who consider Ntozake Shange's chorepoem an essential and groundbreaking part of our literary and performing arts canon. Please please please don't mess it up.

note, passed to superman by Lucille Clifton

2010-09-07T04:01:00.000-07:00

note, passed to superman

sweet jesus, superman,
if i had seen you
dressed in your blue suit
i would have known you.
maybe that choirboy clark
can stand around
listening to stories
but not you, not with
metropolis to save
and every crook in town
filthy with kryptonite.
lord, man of steel,
i understand the cape,
the leggings, the whole
ball of wax.
you can trust me,
there is no planet stranger
than the one i'm from.

--copyright Lucille Clifton, from The Book of Light (1993)

Countdown to Rubie's 100th Birthday!

2010-09-07T02:40:00.000-07:00

My family is preparing for a big birthday bash for my father's mother, my Mama Rubie, that will take place on October 2nd and 3rd in Atlanta. My aunt Miriam is the one doing the hard detailed work and the rest of us are really just going to show up and enjoy. I'm still tinkering with a short tribute that I'll read at the gathering. Before I wrote the first draft, I pulled out my teacher's edition history book to remember the political and cultural events that my grandmother has witnessed. It's amazing to think of how much the world can change in the span of one (long) life.

On September 30 which is her actual birthday, Willard Scott will send Rubie his birthday wishes on The Today Show, so watch if you're able.

When its all over, I know that moments from the event will inspire later fiction that I write. No family event is complete without drama; I'm already getting a taste of it as folks stress out about the planning. The great thing is that when the date arrives, we'll forget the pettiness and prickly personalities and celebrate a remarkable woman. I can't wait to see my grandmother all dressed up, probably with a hat, and surrounded by her many relatives and friends.

A Sobering Labor Day Quote

2010-09-06T13:21:00.001-07:00

Security Guards March for a Union Contract
Originally uploaded by seiu247

"There's no big movement agitating to make working conditions or economic conditions better for most people today."

~ Jefferson Cowie, author of "Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class."

Cowie talks to Joan Walsh on Salon about race, class, and the politics of labor.

Saying No

2010-09-01T13:45:00.001-07:00

say no
Originally uploaded by 32bitwonder

From The Chronicle of Higher Education: great essay by Rachel Toor about saying no to the professional opportunities that take you away from writing.

Writers in the Schools

2010-08-30T10:11:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend I was in Houston for the inaugural Writers in the Schools (WITS) national conference, and it was all kinds of amazing!

WITS is a nonprofit organization now in its 26th year that is headed by Executive Director Robin Reagler and Associate Director Long Chu. WITS sends writers into underresourced communities to provide young people with a chance to work with professional writers. Among the WITS alliance are organizations like Community Word Project in New York, Inside Out Literary Arts Project in Detroit, Badger Dog Literary Publishing in Austin, Wick Poetry Center at Kent State, and Arizona State's Young Writers Program where I work.

The whole conclave was great from the hotel service to the pedagogical training that was shared. Debra and Jeanette were two Houston area teaching artists that talked about their first years of teaching in the program. These women were young but confident, knowledgeable and funny before a crowd.

The most emotional moment for me was listening to Michele Kotler, founding director of Community Word Project. She spoke to a crowd of about 100 teaching artists and alliance members. I could not give Michele's speech justice with a summary but it was a clear-eyed argument (wrapped in a personal story) about privilege, class, art, and literature. I wanted to shout like you do in church. Listening to her, I remembered the importance of literary activism especially in poorer communities where folks are often voiceless.

I'm usually anxious when I think about writing especially about my own writing ambitions. It was nice to focus instead on how to help more young people make their voices heard.

For more information about WITS go to witshouston.org and witsalliance.org

Kid Talk

2010-08-30T09:36:00.001-07:00

kids' talk 3
Originally uploaded by Barbara Moors

Ava said something yesterday that reminded me why I love the way children express themselves. Kids will articulate original ideas in their own language. Of course there are times when they repeat things that they hear. But sometimes they will share an observation that’s totally them working stuff out in their brain. That happened yesterday. After going with me to the grocery store and pet store, after Ava helped me cook dinner and then we bathed her and did her hair, she said this: “You do everything to help keep me alive.”

A Poem

2010-08-25T05:59:00.000-07:00

Free Falling

You and I are right here
flung hard onto a hawk's wing.
We've grown accustomed to the grisly
view below. Once, I watched video of a hand
blown clean from the body; a pale scorpion
dropping curled in desert sand. A girl's face
with an opening where the nose should be.
These pictures dig holes that never close,
as if war was not blood and bones and teeth
and skin shot through the air, as if I am not made
of the same, as if strategies for torture make sense.
Any day now, I expect to raise myself from this ride,
throw my body full from the bird and land
upright and giant.

--copyright 2010 by Renee Simms

MY MIC SOUNDS NICE "First-Time" Teaser

2010-08-25T05:50:00.000-07:00

I'm looking forward to this documentary, "My Mic Sounds Nice: A Truth About Women in Hip-Hop," by Ava DuVernay. It airs on August 30th on BET.

I Heart Antoine & Kelly

2010-08-21T14:19:00.000-07:00

Jezebel has a great post, "How A Viral Video Star's Rant Got Him A New Home," that follows up on Antoine and Kelly Dodson, the brother and sister who became internet stars after speaking out about Kelly's attack by a rapist. I agree that there isn't one way to read the public's fascination with their video. There were many reasons to love the You Tube clip:

Because of Antoine's theatrical performance.
Because Kelly and Antoine chose activism when they could have remained quiet victims.
Because Kelly and Antoine were so comfortable in their skin.
Because the clip showed a community usually ignored by the media.

Anyway, I'm glad to hear the Dodson family is on the come-up.

Emerging Voices + Strange Cargo

2010-08-17T11:14:00.000-07:00

Now, in its 15th year, PEN's Emerging Voices Program is a wonderful opportunity for writers from diverse communities to be mentored, to learn more about the craft of writing, and to present their work to a larger audience in Los Angeles. Here's a description of the program from the penusa.org website:

Emerging Voices
Emerging Voices is a literary fellowship program that aims to provide new writers, who lack access, with the tools they will need to launch a professional writing career. Over the course of the year, each Emerging Voices fellow participates in: a professional mentorship; hosted Q & A evenings with prominent local authors; a series of Master classes focused on genre; and two public readings. The fellowship includes a $1,000 stipend.
The Mentorship Project grew out of PEN USA’s forum “Writing the Immigrant Experience,” held at the Los Angeles Central Library in March 1994, which explored the issues, problems and challenges faced by first and second generation immigrant writers. It was evident from the forum that many of the culturally diverse communities of writers in Southern California have special needs and are often isolated from the literary establishment. In the fall of 1995, PEN USA initiated Emerging Voices as a literary mentorship designed to launch potential professional writers from minority, immigrant and other underserved communities.
Participants need not be published, but the program is directed toward poets and writers of fiction and creative nonfiction with clear ideas of what they hope to accomplish through their writing. There are no age restrictions.
This project is supported in part by grants from the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, The James Irvine Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

And finally, thankfully, the Emerging Voices anthology, Strange Cargo, has arrived with a forward by Janet Fitch. My story, "At Four Thousand Feet and Rising," is featured in the anthology; so is the work of Stephanie Han, Shonda Buchanan, and Denise Uyehara who were fellows in the program with me in 1999.

A reading from the anthology takes place at Skylight Books in L.A. on September 12th, 5 pm.

Ninth Ward

2010-08-10T16:34:00.001-07:00

Congratulations to Jewell Parker Rhodes whose debut children's book, Ninth Ward, was chosen as the selection for Al Roker's Book Club for Kids on the Today Show. I'm really loving the cover of this book. Read a review of Ninth Ward here.

About Overrated

2010-08-10T09:43:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend, writer Anis Shivani published a list of his "15 Most Overrated Contemporary American Authors," which includes Sharon Olds, Louise Gluck, Junot Diaz, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Amy Tan among others. Shivani's list created numerous debates on Facebook, Twitter and in the blogosphere.

I think passions ran high because of the snarky tone of the piece, which I really hated. But I also think people cared because Shivani raises legitimate issues about who gets published and why. This is a sensitive topic for any writer, established or not, because the odds are stacked against publication and/or recognition.

I also disliked the fact that there was such racial and gender diversity on a list of OVERRATED writers, when the praise lists contain so few women writers and writers of color. I also think that Shivani should have focused his critical analysis on the institutions that he says perpetuate literary mediocrity like publishers, awards committees, MFA programs, etc. Targeting the writers seemed cruel and beside the point.

Anyway, I look forward to reading Shivani's forthcoming underrated list. And I've enjoyed following the conversations about his list, including this thread linked from the Rumpus; this blogpost by Becca; and this essay, "Becoming a Writer" by Junot Diaz. Someone linked to the essay as evidence that most writers, including Diaz, work long and hard to do what we do.

Depression Era Photos

2010-08-07T10:04:00.001-07:00

Huffington Post has a neat slideshow of rare color photos from the Depression Era. The photo above is a couple in Puerto Rico in 1941. Check out the pictures here.

Supreme News

2010-08-05T16:36:00.000-07:00

This is an exciting time to be a lawyer. Cases about California's Prop 8 and Arizona's immigration law are making their way through the court system and will likely be decided by the Supreme Court. Both cases will set important precedence.

And now, for the first time in history there are THREE WOMEN on the Supreme Court!! My heart does little flips.

Quotables: Anne Rice and Alisa Valdes

2010-08-03T14:11:00.000-07:00

Author Anne Rice made the following Facebook status update announcing that she has decided to leave Christianity:

"In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control," the author wrote on Wednesday on her Facebook fan page. "In the name of ... Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen."
For the entire story go here

And on her blog, The Dirty Girls Social Club author Alisa Valdes wrote this about the discrimination she's encountered in Hollywood:

When someone like me suggests, armed to the teeth with personal anecdotes and examples, that the “liberal” Hollywood elites continue to employ racist, unrealistic and damaging stereotypes of Hispanic women, they laugh it off and decide that I’m crazy.

To read the entire 8/2/10 entry go here.

Poetry by Niki Herd

2010-08-03T09:34:00.001-07:00

Please put this book on your list immediately: The Language of Shedding Skin by fierce poet Niki Herd. It is her debut collection and it was a finalist in the Main Street Rag poetry competition. The book is available for preorder here and the general release is December 28th.

A Civil Conversation about Immigration

2010-08-03T09:33:00.001-07:00

The Conversation
Originally uploaded by njchow82

The Arizona Humanities Council has a series called Project Civil Discourse and on August 19th they're presenting "A Community Conversation on Immigration" from 6:00-9:00 p.m. at the Rio Salado Conference Center. The event is free, but you need to register.

At the event, participants will sit a table and discuss a topic of the immigration debate for 30 minutes. Then you rotate to a new table to discuss the topic with different people. Three topics will be introduced. For more information go to projectcivildiscourse.com

A Summer Photo

2010-07-27T12:58:00.003-07:00

Anticipation + Faith

2010-07-27T12:23:00.000-07:00

Interesting list on Huffington Post of the "Most Anticipated Books for the Rest of 2010." I'll be checking out the books by Thomas Sayers Ellis and Beckian Fritz Goldberg.

And this article on the faith of Albert Einstein.

Post-Racial Era Discussions About Race

2010-07-26T06:10:00.000-07:00

If you are getting tired of the shrill discussions about race that were sparked by the Shirley Sherrod firing, I suggest you check out these thoughtful pieces on race and publishing written over the last three years by black women writers:

"Writers Like Me" by Martha Southgate

"Reading Too Much Into Race " by Carleen Brice

"Black Writers in a Ghetto of the Publishing Industry's Making" by Bernice L. McFadden

"Readers, Rise Up" by Tayari Jones

Last week, author Lori L. Tharps wrote a provocative piece on the networking site SheWrites where she asked for white ambassadors to help get the word out about her new book. I think Tharps intended for the piece to be a humorous and informative essay about the challenges black writers have in marketing their books, but based on the responses to the piece, I'm not sure her intentions were clear.

People have noted that Sherrod's NAACP speech was nuanced and talked about race in a way that was not simple. I think that anytime you're aiming for the truth, and not a soundbite, what you say will be nuanced. This is why writers and literature are so important, especially today amidst our fast paced media culture. Sometimes the quieter and more reflective voices have the most to say.

Dog Update Number 1

2010-07-25T20:11:00.000-07:00

Seymour at the rescue shelter

Seymour, a three year old chihuahua mix, has been at our house for six days now. Incidents of pee in the house: three. The shedding has been minimal. I didn't want a goofy dog who runs, jumps, and aims to please all of the time and I'm happy to report that Seymour is more of a depressed neurotic like the rest of us which is quite nice. He's more like a cat than a dog but he's warming up to us as time passes. He growls at Paul, tries to intimidate Ava with his tiny teeth, but is usually friendly to me and Amir. He treats me like the alpha dog of our house and is kindly rewarded for this with chicken flavored treats.

I fought against a pet for many years even though I grew up with a poodle (Muffin Pierre Renee Richardson) and owned three cats as an adult. But I'm glad that I gave in to the kids' request for a pet. They are learning responsibility, the nonverbal language of animals, and how to be compassionate towards another living being. It's cool to watch the kids bond with this little dog. The other day, Seymour began laying on his back, exposing his belly for a rub, which I tell the kids is always a good sign.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

2010-07-21T21:44:00.000-07:00

I am reading this book now, a little bit after it was the featured book of a book club that I belong to in Phoenix, Sisters of the Desert Sun. I'm sure you've heard of The Immortal Life... since it's been highly publicized . It's the story about Henrietta Lacks, a black Southern woman who had her cancer cells taken without her knowledge and used as an important tool in medicine. Her cells were the first to become immortal, they've been replicating for half a century.

Anyway, I am struck by the poetic vision of the author, Rebecca Skloot. This could have been just a science story with a little narrative about the Lacks family thrown in. Instead Skloot seems interested in the social justice angle of the story and uses juxtaposition, irony irony, and other literary techniques to dig into the heart of the story. Take this passage about the white male researcher, George Gey, who takes the HeLa cells as they are known and starts distributing them:

He sent shipments of HeLa cells to researchers in Texas, India, New York, Amsterdam, and many places between. Those researchers gave them to more researchers, who gave them to more still. Henrietta's cells rode into the mountains of Chile in the saddlebags of pack mules. As Gey flew from one lab to another, demonstrating his culturing techniques and helping to set up new laboratories, he always flew with tubes of Henrietta's cells in his breast pocket. And when scientists visited Gey's lab to learn his techniques, he usually sent them home with a vial or two of HeLa. In letters, Gey and some of his collegues began referring to the cells as his "precious babies."

--from The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Copyright 2010 by Rebecca Skloot

A Little of This. A Bit of That.

2010-07-21T20:47:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting essay in Slate magazine about taking ten years to write one novel.

Honoree Jeffers writes about the problems of contemporary black hip hop poetry in The Kenyon Review.

The winner of the Passion Project Contest on SheWrites will give an emerging writer all the tools she needs to put together a winning nonfiction book proposal.

The Idlewild Writers and Poets Conference will happen August 12-14 in Idlewild, Michigan. The focus of the conference is "the rich literary legacy associated with this historic African-American community known as one of the premier entertainment and performance venues during the 50s and early 60s."

An article in The Guardian chronicles how abandoned property in Detroit is being converted into farmland. I've been hearing stories about an increase in wildlife in once strictly urban areas. A friend who grew up in Southfield, Michigan with me says that her parents have a family of deer that visit their backyard regularly.

"This was Once All Underwater"

2010-07-21T20:27:00.000-07:00

That's what Paul and I kept saying to friends while we drove around Sedona recently. The city is 4500 feet above sea level, but if you ever take a guided tour of the famous red rocks, you'll learn that it was "once all underwater," and that you're walking in a prehistoric seabed. The gradations in the rock are supposed to be evidence of the water as it receded over time.

All I know is Sedona is one of my favorite places on earth, followed by Paris. The scale of the place, like the Grand Canyon, is mind boggling. I'm trying to carry the bigness and three-dimensionality of Sedona around with me because everything looks so small and insignificant in comparison. In other words, it was a good vacation.

The photo is courtesy of Daily Venture.

R.I.P. Harvey Pekar

2010-07-13T07:13:00.000-07:00

I was so sad to read that Harvey Pekar, the comic book writer of the American Splendor series has passed away at 70. I loved how he embraced being ordinary, midwestern, awkward, and how he found humor in very ordinary experiences. The Washington Post has a piece about Pekar that includes this quote about his writing philosophy:

"The humor of everyday life is way funnier than what the comedians do on TV," Mr. Pekar once said. "It's the stuff that happens right in front of your face when there's no routine and everything is unexpected. That's what I want to write about."

If you've ever felt like a misfit, you've got to read Pekar's work or at least rent the movie American Splendor which stars the actor Paul Giamatti.

Organization is Key

2010-07-11T09:25:00.000-07:00

This is not a sexy post.

It's about organization. I've spent this summer doing work that I've ignored or avoided for years, like figuring out what that stuff is that's crammed between my bedroom wall and headboard (one hundred dusty gift bags) or what that stuff is pushed into the far corners of my closet (photographs and school papers from college). I've thrown away tons of paper, and bought plastic filing drawers for the papers that I could not throw away. There are Paul's papers, my papers, Ava's ENDLESS drawings and Amir's ENDLESS school papers. Getting all of these things filed in a drawer system is important for two reasons, so we can find them and because Arizona is dusty, dusty, dusty and papers attract dust.

I've been to Goodwill several times to unload. I've painted two rooms (well I served as the general contractor and gave instructions). I've bought furniture, rearranged stuff and de-cluttered the house in general. On the side of the refrigerator I placed a huge calendar that shows all of our schedules for the next four months. I've included writing deadlines in this large calendar which has helped me see how I can merge what's a priority for me (writing and publishing) with my kids' many commitments. I can't emphasize enough how helpful it is to see where I have empty blocks of time. It has helped me visualize when I can sneak time to write other than in the middle of the night.

Last year, I made a vow to make writing a priority in my life in a way that I had not before then. I'm glad that I did and I'm starting to see the fruits of my effort, but oowee! the stress that I endured trying to finish a manuscript while working full time and toting kids to extracurricular activities. The stress was unbelievable. For the first time in my life, I experienced total exhaustion, chest pains, and migraine headaches. For the first time in decades, I had to see a doctor for symptoms and not a routine visit. I realized then that keeping four calendars in my head and not sleeping was insane. A friend, Dawn, laughed with me that multitasking is overrated. In fact, I'd say its not multitasking but more like ADHD.

This doesn't mean that my life is less busy or that I have more time to write. It just means that I can negotiate the chaos with more ease, which will be important when, on July 20, our family adopts Mr. Seymour Simms shown below.

Lauryn Hill "Turn Your Lights Down Low" - Harmony Festival

2010-06-29T01:22:00.000-07:00

Speaking of motherhood and art, this NPR interview of Lauryn Hill appeared on June 28, 2010. "I don't know if you know this, but I have five children," Hill said in the interview. She'd been asked why she hasn't been recording and touring more. The video is Hill on June 13 at the Harmony Festival in Santa Rosa, CA.

On Thursday I Found This in My Notebook

2010-06-27T14:08:00.000-07:00

On Thursday I Found This in My Notebook

by Amiri Baraka

When love is perfected, when love
is understood.
When love is the law
& the measure
The ruler & ruled & body of
of what is body mind of
what is mind
When love & the Soul
are uncovered
then you will always
sound like
Duke Ellington.

Leimert Park Book Fair

2010-06-25T16:22:00.000-07:00

If you are in or near L.A. this weekend, check it out. Authors scheduled to appear include Ruth Forman, Imani Tolliver, Ishmael Reed, Attica Locke, Tananarive Due and many others.

the tree of life

2010-06-25T15:52:00.001-07:00

the tree of life
Originally uploaded by madstfri

I've been thinking a lot about one of my obsessions: parenthood from an artist's perspective. People have been buzzing about Who Does She Think She Is, a documentary about women artists and our competing demands of muse and family. Michael Chabon's 2009 interview on Fresh Air ran again. In it he talks about his book of essays, Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father and Son. And I've been planning a creative project with two fabulous poets who are also mothers. When we get together we often discuss the way that our home lives influence our writing and our writing pedagogy since we also teach.

But this essay by writer Holly Kretschmar about eating her afterbirth (her baby's placenta, the "tree of life") was so unexpected, so weirdly fascinating that I had to share it. Only a writer could analyze what it means to eat yourself.

Speaking of Democracy + Writing

2010-06-24T13:45:00.000-07:00

Laura Miller at Salon has written another article about the demise of literature as we know it. In this latest piece she argues that new technology has made it easier for "everyone" to publish and soon we will all be awash in the dreck from the slush pile.

A basic assumption of Miller's essay is that writers whose work lingers in a slush pile or who self-publish are simply not good enough to find traditional publishers. I don't know if that was ever really the case (certainly some writers have been marginalized because of biases within the industry that are unrelated to talent), but I know that Miller's assumption does not apply to many writers today. Ask any MFA graduate who was good enough to get into a prestigious writing program but who can't find a publisher to buy his book.

I listened to such a person this spring at a panel at AWP. He was a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop. He published over half of the stories in his story collection with traditional literary journals, but still could not find an agent or publisher who would take him on. He ended up scrapping the collection and publishing sections of his novel online with a site that specializes in audio podcasts. He found a huge audience who liked what he wrote. After finding a market, a traditional publisher became interested and published his work.

That writer was and is talented. His problem was not his writing, but the changing marketplace. The publishing industry is being reshaped by market forces just like the music industry, journalism, and the movie industry. If Miller's essay had not assumed that all unpublished writing is bad, the essay may have provided a less cynical view of how literature and publishing might flourish in our new technological age.

Besides, Ms. Miller, what's wrong with the "democratization of the slush pile"? If you don't like something, don't read it. It shouldn't matter if it's an e-book or the old fashioned kind. But I suspect that the real problem is the democratization of the gatekeepers.

What I've Been Writing

2010-06-24T11:45:00.000-07:00

The Backup Singer (an excerpt)

These days, I’m inclined to think that my parents are going insane. I consider flying back home to see if this is true because, hey, these things are hard to gauge by telephone. They sound crazy when we talk, perhaps they’re displaying the first signs of dementia, but how can I be sure? Last week, my mother was going on and on about a recipe from some cooking show that she likes to watch on cable, and my father seizes the phone and screams that my mother has piles of clothes, magazines, and photo albums that are stacked up to the ceiling in the house. That I will find him dead and buried beneath a pile of junk, and don’t say that he didn’t warn me. Then my mother gets back on the phone (she’s calm) and resumes talking about shrimp frittata. My father continues yelling in the background.

Sure, if what daddy says is true, it would be easy to say that my mother is the crazy one in the relationship, except my father is a former entertainer and dramatic by nature. He was a backup singer for Motown, but he has always craved the spotlight. For years my mother and I suffered the brunt of his insatiable need for attention. This year, he has shared this character flaw with the entire country, writing a rambling op-ed that has been published in several papers.

He’s getting lots of media attention for the editorial from places like CNN. To me, the piece reads like a rant. It’s filled with conspiracy theories and self-righteous directives, yet underneath it all I guess there’s a moral truth that people are responding to. Still, this attention-grabbing behavior seems a little “extra,” even for daddy, so Mike and I talk about what’s going on and I purchase a roundtrip ticket to Michigan.

My Thankful List

2010-06-11T06:58:00.000-07:00

Here's what I'm thankful for today, June 11, 2010:

1. That my latest story submission is being seriously considered by two respected journals.

2. That although my a/c faltered the other day during triple-digit heat, it was easily and cheaply repaired and we suffered only three sweaty hours without air.

3. That my family arrived safely in Tennessee and I get three days home alone before I join them.

4. That when I join them, I'll see my many nieces and sisters-in-law (sing: I got all my sisters with me!)

5. That I heard back from an amazing and kind writer-professor who has my manuscript.

6. That said amazing and kind writer-professor has a sense of humor and understood when I misread his name on an email and responded as if talking to an old college friend (their names are that similar).

7. That I continue to have ideas for writing projects.

8. That I will meet friends tonight at Pizzeria Bianco.

9. That today is Friday, tomorrow is Saturday and there are no major worries to report.

Barbara Kingsolver wins The Orange

2010-06-09T16:14:00.001-07:00

Barbara Kingsolver & Ilan Stavans in Conversation
Originally uploaded by LIVEfromtheNYPL

Congratulations to Barbara Kingsolver who is the winner of this year's Orange Prize for her novel, The Lacuna. For more information on her win go here.

Quote of the Day

2010-06-09T15:40:00.000-07:00

I did a workshop the other day for high school students who are interested in a career in education. At the end of the workshop I received a certificate that contained this quote:

"The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others."

--Ghandi

Helen's Generation

2010-06-08T14:07:00.001-07:00

I have felt particularly sad for veteran White House reporter Helen Thomas who was forced to retire this week after making remarks about Israel and Palestine. I feel sad because although Helen was no shrinking violet, she was an elder, and I wasn't raised to dishonor my elders publicly or privately.

I also thought Helen's story highlighted our nation's geopolitics. Because Israel is a strategic ally in the middle east, the U.S. always supports Israel, at all costs and despite what that nation does in violation of international human rights.

So I've thought about age and politics, there have been discussions about anti-Semitism, but I had not thought about gender as a factor in this story. Anna Clark from Isak touches upon this in her piece for Salon. To what extent do you think Helen's gender played a role in the ferocious reaction to her remarks? Would she have been treated the same way if she were a man?

And back to age: there is something so incredibly fierce about Helen's generation of women which includes the recently departed Lena Horne and Dorothy Height. Thomas was 89, still working, still asking the tough questions front row in the White House. (And can I add that she's a Detroiter and Wayne State graduate? Woop woop!)

I will celebrate my own grandmother's 100th birthday this October and let me tell you, like Helen Thomas, Mama Rubie is no shrinking violet.

In the Space of One Year

2010-06-04T19:03:00.001-07:00

Here is Ava last year on June 12th:

And this May in her soccer uniform:

This is how I mark the time.

From the File of Nice Rejection Letters: PART TWO

2010-06-04T18:39:00.000-07:00

The note shown above was written by a very young intern, I'm sure. It's very sweet but I came to hate it because it gave me unrealistic hopes about how easy it would be to publish in Harper's Magazine. I think it was beginner's luck.

The following note, "R, I'd like to see something grownup" from Howard Junker at Zyzzyva was some of the best free advice I received. Of course, at the time I was pissed at this comment about my story with teenaged protagonists:

Keep sending! Keep sending, indeed.

Digable Planets - Cool Like That

2010-06-03T14:36:00.000-07:00

Staying Cool

2010-06-03T14:15:00.000-07:00

Because it's getting so hot outside, here's a little coolness.....

We Real Cool

The Pool Players.
Seven at the Golden Shovel.

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

--copyright Gwendolyn Brooks

Hear an audio clip of Ms. Brooks reading her poem here

Read Terrance Hayes' extremely cool variation on Brooks' poem here

From the File of Nice Rejection Letters

2010-05-28T08:26:00.000-07:00

I received a nice rejection letter last week by email. Contents below:

Dear Renee,

We thank you for submitting your story, "Her Own Private Idaho," to Electric Literature, though it was not chosen for publication in our journal.

We are committed to publishing short stories by both new and more established writers, and hope that you will consider sending us your best work in the future.

Sincerely,

Editors,
Electric Literature

www.electricliterature.com

Renee,

Just wanted to let you know that a reader said there was "something really nice about this writing" and described it as "fluid, easy to read."
Thank you for sharing your work with us.

Ben

On Wed, Jan 6, 2010 at 12:54 AM, renee simms wrote:

Attached please find my story "Her Own Private Idaho". Thanks for reading my work.

Renee Simms

*****

Something about that personal note at the end, made it easier to accept and sent me back to my rejection letter folder to find the "nice" letters I've received through the years:

Some were just short handwritten notes:

And some were a bit longer:

But each was a nice surprise in a process that can wear on the nerves. Look for pics of more letters in a following post....

From Huffington Post's "Gulf Oil Spill: Animals in Peril"

2010-05-28T08:05:00.000-07:00

D'Angelo - Africa (acoustic)

2010-05-27T06:34:00.000-07:00

Good Things Happening in AZ

2010-05-06T03:17:00.001-07:00

I went with my kids to the candlelight vigil and protest against AZ's immigration law held last night at the state capitol building in Phoenix. Rev. Al Sharpton led a march from Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church to the capitol where several hundred people were already gathered with signs, candles, American flags, collage art, makeshift jail cells. A woman I didn't know thanked me for coming and said that she really appreciated the support of my family. Local writers were up in the crowd. I saw the efforts of poets Mark Haunschild and Fernando Perez who have provided a space for children and adults at the protests to use paint and markers to leave handprints and visual artwork against SB 1070.

I saw the Los Suns jerseys that the Phoenix Suns wore last night in their game against the Spurs. Sharpton was wearing a jersey when he spoke last night.

This week the city councils of Tucson and Flagstaff have voted to sue the state over SB 1070.

Last Friday, the documentary "9500 Liberty" premiered at Harkins Valley Art Theater on Mill Avenue in Tempe. According to the filmmaker's press release, "the documentary is about a Virginia county's short mandate requiring officers to question people they had cause to suspect were undocumented immigrants. The Prince William County mandate was repealed in two months due to negative economic, legal and public safety impacts." The documentary is playing all this week.

Speaking of documentaries, on Saturday, May 8th from 5:30-7:30 pm at Civic Park Space, 424 N. Central in downtown Phoenix, there's a screening of the film "A Village Called Versailles." From the press release:

Welcome to Versailles, New Orleans––home to the densest ethnic Vietnamese population outside of Vietnam. For over 30 years, its residents lived a quiet existence on the edge of New Orleans. But then came Hurricane Katrina, the immense garbage piles and the shocking discovery of a toxic landfill planned in their neighborhood. Watch as they fight back, turning a devastating disaster into a catalyst for change and a chance to build a better future. Independent Lens is like an independent film festival that introduces new documentaries and dramas made by independent thinkers: filmmakers who are taking creative risks, calling their own shots and finding untold stories in unexpected places.

And today at Civic Park Space I will be taking part in Poetry Central where several Phoenix Union High School students will get the opportunity to write poetry on themes of war and peace in response to paintings created by Vietnamese Children. It's part of the Vietnamese Children's Art Project that you can read about here.

Quotes: Ron Carlson

2010-05-05T13:19:00.000-07:00

I've been reading Ron Carlson stories this week and loving every minute of it. Here's an excerpt from the story, "A Kind of Flying":

"It's quiet in the store today. I can count sparrows on the wire across the road. My advice! She smiled yesterday when I told her. Just get married. Have a friend sing your favorite song at the wedding. Marriage, she said, what is it? Well, I said, it's not life on a cake. It's a bird taking your head in his beak and you walk the sky. It's marriage. Sometimes it pinches like a bird's mouth, but it's definitely flying, it's definitely a kind of flying."

Ssssshhhhhh!

2010-05-05T12:56:00.000-07:00

Artwork from http://www.mindmapinspiration.com. Copyright Paul Foreman.

I'm dealing with a lot of clutter lately.
Cluttered schedule.
cluttered desk.
cluttered house.
cluttered mind.
And yet in the far reaches of my messy life lurks the last draft of the last story that I want to complete. It bubbles up every now and then--what a tease. If I can make it through all of the work events, birthday parties, soccer practices, baseball games, etcetera, I will finish the story. "Ssh," is what I'll say if you dare interrupt.

For Those Who Were Teenaged Prince Fanatics Like Me

2010-04-30T10:12:00.000-07:00

The Death of Soul, a Remix

I've decided to marry a treble clef or break beat
men, sex, music are that intertwined in my life
me and my future husband will speak exclusively in song lyrics
or island patois, pidgin, rien que Anglais, unless it's rhythmic
like: you're jinglin' baby/go 'head baby
you're jinglin' baby/go 'head baby

I blame this alchemy of men and music on my childhood
which rocked with tambourine shakes, doo-wop harmony
and in every other house lived a slick-pretty man who could sing.

Men with bass-guitar voices, men inside pyramid homes, men
driving Cadillacs glossed by the moon. How could I not be
peculiar? Post-Motown Detroit, air still ripe with miracles
and temptations and me with wild, flapping feelings
between my nine year old thighs.

Then 1977, he arrived.

He was guitar riffs and wanton falsetto, everything I felt
but could not express, only knew it when I heard it
like when his anthem spun soft and wet on FM radio.

My best friend's daddy, who sang backup, didn't like him.

Pornographic, her daddy said. The devil, Mama would say
but what did they know? My girlfriend's daddy kept
women vacant as Smokey Robinson's house and
Motown was dead at the edge of a continent--
the pious heel-spins by suited men, cliches
we no longer used.

I tape-recorded my love's voice, carried scrolled parchments
with his songs, memorized his impish face. He was what it
meant to be young and hot, to be distilled between
the rub of bricks, Funk and your parents' social movements.
He was North American royalty, was cravings
unsheathed, the center of a flower,
seduction as a principle.

Nothing is permanent.
Not neighborhoods or soul music.

Even my history of lovers mimics staccato:
I've loved dozens of dark, polished men
who were abruptly gone

--copyright Renee Simms, from Mischief, Caprice, & Other Poetic Strategies (Red Hen Press 2004)

Immigration + Women Protagonists

2010-04-27T16:51:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I can't process an event until I can relate it to literature. Literature serves as my religion; I use it to make sense of what I'm experiencing. So today, as I listened to discussions about Arizona's draconian immigration law, and talked to a friend who was coming to the state in May but who now is cancelling her trip in protest, I kept thinking about the novel Mosquito by Gayl Jones. The main character of that story, Sojourner Nadine Jane Johnson, is a truck driver in the American southwest who discovers a pregnant woman, Maria, in her truck. Nadine then becomes involved in a modern day underground railroad, transporting "illegal immigrants" into the country. Here's an excerpt from the beginning of the book:

"I'm a truck driver, like I told you, and the onliest African-American woman trucker on this route. They's plenty women truckers nowadays--though ain't that many in South Texas....

I asks Maria she still hungry. Course I don't know them Spanish words for it. But she know what I'm saying. She shake her head no and wipe her mouth again on them Handi Wipes. She kinda pat her belly, like she saying that baby he seem like he well fed too. Then she kinda lean back against one of them detergent drums. I rolls up my trail mix and puts it behind one of them other detergent drums, but nods towards it, so she knows if she want some of that trail mix she welcome to it. Then I just sits back against one of them detergent drums. That Maria her features kinda reminds me of them Mayans. I can't tell whether she a peasant or what. Her hands kinda got few blisters on them, but they ain't knarled sunburnt like the hands of them womens that works in the fields. They's dirt under her fingernails, but that seem like it from scratching her way across the borders."

Because the novel is written in first person stream of consciousness it was sometimes difficult to get through, but I think I'll revisit it to remember what Jones had to say about identity and nationality in this moment of our nation's history.

As I flipped through Jones's book, I also thought about a panel I attended at AWP a few weeks ago. It was titled "All Around Bitch: The Challenges of Writing Unlikable Female Protagonists." While I wouldn't call Nadine a bitch, she definitely is not a "passive, selfless, sacrificial woman" (to use language from the panel description) and she possesses motivations and behaviors that are typically seen in male characters. Maybe this is why I loved the heroine of Mosquito and continued to read it despite struggling with the improvisational nature of the narrative. I've also realized that the characters in most of my stories are less than "likable." And that's okay. That means there's a whole spectrum of behavior that I get to explore.

As the Temperature Rises in Arizona...

2010-04-26T14:41:00.001-07:00

....(today it will be 92 degrees)...the collective intelligence of AZ Republicans drops to an all time low. Hence the proposed immigration reform bill which everyone has criticized as unconstitutional, a violation of the 14th Amendment, a violation of notions of federalism, and a law which requires racial profiling in its application. President Obama has instructed the Justice Department to see if the bill would violate civil rights.

Meanwhile, Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon says he will sue the state over the bill. Hundreds of Arizonans marched this weekend in protest. Congressman Raul Grijalva has been vocal in his anger over the bill. Rev. Al Sharpton, who spoke about this very issue in February at a panel on Civil Rights at ASU, says he will return to march in the streets with undocumented workers.

And the response? Refried beans smeared in the shape of a swastika on the state capitol. Cute.

BTW, I heard one report, that I can't confirm, that eighty percent of the calls by Arizonans to Governor Jan Brewer were against the bill, but she signed it anyway.

No Impact Man

2010-04-26T05:38:00.000-07:00

I watched the documentary "No Impact Man" this weekend. If you haven’t seen or read about it, the film is about a New York writer, Colin Beavan who talks his wife into forgoing basic luxuries for one year so that their family will make the least possible impact on the environment. They don’t use toilet paper, they eat only local foods, they don’t drive or take a flight on an airplane. And they turn off the electricity in their apartment for six months of that year. Did I mention that they do all of this with a two year old who is still in diapers?

Although this lifestyle sounds drastic, even for a year, I’m not sure how much convincing Beavan’s wife really needed since the project was part of his book deal. He did the experiment and wrote about it, presumably for a decent advance, and the media exposure they received from the NY Times, Good Morning America, Stephen Colbert's show and elsewhere ensured good book sales which was followed up with the release of the documentary.

Plenty of critics have written that Beavan’s ultimate motivation was money and notoriety. They say the experiment was really a staged stunt. One of the film’s interesting moments occurs when a local urban farmer tells Beavan that he isn’t making an impact at all. “If you were really making an impact, you wouldn’t be getting all of this media attention,” he says. The farmer, who has long white hair and looks like he just made it out of the Sixties, points out that Michelle still works as a journalist for Business Week, a company that kills thousands of trees, he says. And the couple still lives in a 5^th Avenue co-op, he continues, so what if they don’t use the elevator to get to their unit on the 9^th floor? In short, the farmer tells Colin, you’re still caught up in the capitalist machinery.

Stunt or no stunt, I found the documentary thought-provoking. It made me think about the modern family and how much we consume. It also made me think about the connection between poverty and environmental impact versus privilege and environmental impact. Colin and Michelle chose to downgrade their lifestyles to lessen their carbon footprints, but many people share a similar lifestyle--they don’t have a car, can’t afford to fly, wear secondhand clothing, don’t own a television—but they haven’t chosen to do without these things. They’re just broke.

I’d say that many people I know fall somewhere in between. We buy local, recycle, shop thrift stores, take public transportation. We live this way because we care about the environment, but also because living this way fits into our budgets. In my case, I’m also bringing what I learned from several years of being extremely broke.

I learned how much I could live without in the late 1990s when I lost all of my savings and retirement money on a risky investment. Just like that, we went from two cars to one. A bicycle became the mode of transportation to work. I frequented pawn stores and payday loan stores. I learned to get creative in the kitchen, looking at the one onion, one egg, and package of rice and thinking, okay, fried rice for dinner.

There were benefits to a scaled down lifestyle. Like Michelle and Colin discuss in the film, it does force a family to interact, to go outside, to feel less anxiety about “things.” But when you’re poor, you have a bunch of other problems and thinking about the environment isn’t one of them.

At the end of the film, the couple talks about what they will try to incorporate into their lives from their year of no impact. Colin still blogs about what he's continuing to do to ease our environmental crisis. My guess is that their desire to make the earth more livable has kept them on the path. But never underestimate the power of material status.

In Celebration of Poetry Month

2010-04-20T13:31:00.000-07:00

I've read so many good poetry collections in the last couple days. Randall Horton's The Definition of Place (Main Street Rag Publishing 2006) was one of them. Here's one of my favorite poems from that collection:

The Ideology of the Lean

I'm thinking to myself Superfly the first time I see
Pocketknife bend the corner between history and
algebra class, almost hugging brick wall with his
right shoulder, the stringent sway of his left arm like
a well oiled piece of machinery in search of a brace
to propel his young-blood strut. Although his strides
are not long, each time he thrusts the bow of his legs,
drag pigeon-toed feet forward, the circular crack
of space revealed speaks of contempt, a trait that will
always keep him unchained. So I emulate his defiance,
practicing in front of full length mirrors anywhere I can;
perfect my own variation of the lean until it feels natural
and I can express my entire belief system in a walk.

(Copyright Randall Horton 2006)

R.I.P Dr. Dorothy Height

2010-04-20T13:16:00.001-07:00

Photo from www.heinzawards.net

There are some people who do such good work for so long that you think they will live forever. Civil rights pioneer Dorothy Height was one such person. I will miss seeing Height in the news with her trademark hats. I'm also missing civil rights leader Benjamin Hooks who passed away five days before Height. Here's an interview of Height from six years ago on msnbc.com

On Resurrection

2010-04-05T03:28:00.000-07:00

As a girl, the story of Jesus' crucifixion really bothered me. The brutal torture and killing of a nonviolent man was too much for me, especially if there were illustrations of the crucifixion in the Sunday school book. His disappearance from the tomb was unsettling too, even though in church we were told his disappearance was a happy ending. I spent countless Sundays hearing the resurrection story and at some point I stopped feeling creeped out by it and even became comforted by this narrative structure. Give me a character pushed to her limit, forced to redeem herself, and I’m happy. Give me a celebrity who falls from grace then reinvents himself and I’m reading the tabloid story online.

Then there is Martin Luther King, Jr. Yesterday, was the 42^nd anniversary of his assassination. King’s story, his vilification while living and our reading of his life as a sacrifice for our community, is eerie in its parallels with the story of Christ. Last week, PBS had two shows that focused on King that are worth catching if you missed them. One was a documentary with Tavis Smiley, and the other was Bill Moyer’s show last Friday.

And finally, dominoes. After Easter dinner at my uncle’s house, our family sat down to play the game. There was a lot of trash-talking as usual, but the best line came from the winner who’d been losing during the early rounds. “And because its Resurrection Sunday!” he said, slapping his bone on the table.

A Reason to Keep Going

2010-04-04T14:10:00.000-07:00

My short story, "Secondhand Objects" was named a 2009 Notable Story by storySouth. The entire list is here. I'm just learning of this prize but the process appears pretty democratic. Journal editors or readers can nominate any story, of at least 1,000 words, that appeared in an online publication for the previous year. Judges then reduce this list to the Notable Stories of 2009. storySouth editor Jason Sanford will reduce the notable stories to ten. Then the public can vote for their favorite and the winner gets a cash prize. The objective of the prize is to showcase good fiction that appears on the web.