Writing in Series

I kicked off January by reading MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood and Lila by Marilynne Robinson. Each book is the third in a series, each released 10 years after the first book in the series. Among other things, these works got me thinking about the reason for writing in a series and what a third book […]

2014 Reading Review – Part 2

[You can find the first part of my 2014 reading review here] Novels * Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold – This has been sitting on our shelf for years, thanks again to my wife having picked it up at some point. It was a great novel to get lost in, with a little […]

2014 Reading Review – Part 1

I finished 29 books in 2014. Considering what else we have going on in our lives, I think that’s a pretty good number, though I’m always interested in reading more. Since my reviews came out to over 2,000 words, I’ve decided to break things up a bit. Below is entry 1 of 2. Feel free […]

Getting to Know a Favorite Author

In a departure from the more difficult reading of late, I’ve returned to another favorite genre: memoir. In this case, the book I just finished was Ann Patchett’s This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage. The book is actually a collection of her non-fiction work, basically the writing that paid her bills before her […]

Ferguson, In Context

On Friday, for our last session of class, I taught my students about contemporary inequality in America and the process of racial segregation in the Ferguson area. I’d planned this since the summer, when I learned that I would have one more day of instruction than usual. I had no idea that the grand jury’s decision […]

Credit for Progress

I’m reading Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie right now. It fit my recent reading interests and is getting all kinds of buzz, so I decided to give it a try. It’s deserving of the praise and I’m sure I’ll have more to say when I’m done. For now, I just want to highlight one passage that describes […]

Peaceful Revolution

In a 1962 speech to the Alliance for Progress, John F. Kennedy declared, Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. Martin Luther King, Jr. quoted that line five years later in his speech to Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam, in which he denounced the U.S. involvement in the war and […]

Religion and This World

Perhaps because I know less about the context of Cry, The Beloved County, I found myself drawn more to the religious tensions addressed in the book. For instance, after recording a powerful sermon by one of the most saintly characters in the book, Alan Paton writes this: It is good for the Government, they say in Johannesburg, that Msimangu […]

Meeting Dolores Huerta

Wednesday night I had the rare opportunity to meet someone I teach my students about: Dolores Huerta. She was a co-founder of the organization that would become the United Farm Workers. She has continued to work tirelessly for migrant workers, students, and workers in general, both Chicano/as and others. At 85 she’s still busy promoting these causes […]

The Context of Violence

It seems our family is full of Baltimore lately, a city we’ve never visited. But my wife’s been reading Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, I’ve been reading The Beautiful Struggle, and we’ve both been listening to Serial. From these sources, it’s not a pretty picture. In reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’ fantastic memoir, I ran across […]