Next semester, I’m teaching Alice Walker’s The Color Purple alongside a couple of her essays, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Ernest Gaines’ Of Love and Dust, and other works. Preparing for the class, I recently read Walker’s 1976 essay “Saving the Life That is Your Own: The Importance of Models in the Artist’s Life.” Walker wrote the essay in the mid-1970s, at a moment … Read More Writing Saves Lives
Two of my favorite short stories are Toni Morrison’s “Recitatif” and Ernest Gaines’ “The Sky is Gray.” Each of these stories, in different ways, interrogates the deployment of language and how language serves as a foundation to the social construction of race the subversion of that false construction. Morrison states that “‘Recitatif’ was an experiment in the removal of all racial codes from a … Read More Writing Process for “Paper”
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A few months ago, Jadyn DeWald asked me to participate in a reading on campus. I debated reading something about Frank Yerby or Lillian Smith; however, I chose, instead, to write a short story. Below is the story that I wrote. It is entitled “Paper.”
Recently, my essay, “I Have a Secret,” appeared in Down Yonder ‘Zine, and Adam Jordan asked me some questions about the essay on Twitter. I wrote this essay back in the summer of 2020 following the murders of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Ahmaud Arbery and the accosting of Christian Copper in Central Park as he was birdwatching. It is one of the most … Read More Writing “I Have a Secret”
Interminable Rambling 