Writing about place, people, and whatever parts of the universe I'm lucky to see.
The last few weeks, my bedtime reading has been another novel I found in the marvelous book storage room at school: Untouchable, published in 1935. It was Mulk Raj Anand's debut novel, written in English, and it marked the beginning of Anand's use of literature to argue against the British colonial presence in India as... Continue Reading →
Sometimes in my writing journey these last several years, I have taken issue with old writing advice--the mandate to show, don't tell; the focus on active verbs that overshadows the great work other verbs do; Western literature's myopic focus on conflict--these are all pieces of inherited writing wisdom that, with deeper thought on my own... Continue Reading →
In 1966, the Dominican writer Jean Rhys published her most celebrated work, the novella Wide Sargasso Sea. It marked her return to the literary scene after a near twenty-year's gap, and it inspired a large body of scholarship and study. Wide Sargasso Sea took as its focus the character of Bertha Mason in Charlotte Brontë's... Continue Reading →
Moving from the first to the second to the umpteenth draft is a slow and winding process. Sometimes we love it, seeing our writing transform, clearing away the debris of extra words, shifting our ideas into a clearer order--sometimes we hate it, when we're tinkering, perfectionizing, wondering if the changes we persist at make any... Continue Reading →
I'm an e-reader lover--the convenience of travel, the ready availability of English books when living in rural Norway, their searchability, the ability to convert my own writing into e-book format for a more authentic read-through--there are many things I love about these devices. But of course, the book as a physical object is not to... Continue Reading →
After a glitteringly beautiful August, the rainy days have come. Bands of mist hang against the sides of the mountains, and the colors have muted themselves, clamped closer together in the wet. Sometimes I feel confused about rain. There is of course beauty in rainy days. Particular things, like the water clinging to grass blades,... Continue Reading →
I worried I was making the wrong choice with books this school year. I worried the book was too long, that the students wouldn't read, and I worried that there was not enough depth of language to warrant the kind of study we needed. But I kept coming back to First They Killed My Father--I... Continue Reading →
For years, we have been planning a dinner with colleagues. The idea first arose two or three years ago--my husband and I are hobby cheesemakers, and two of our colleague-friends come from India and make delicious food. When we mentioned once that we had made paneer over the weekend, our colleague hatched the plan: you... Continue Reading →
Content warning: this post contains discussion of genocide and associated acts of violence, in the context of a literary analysis. The week has been packed. On Tuesday and Wednesday, I led student orientation workshops on diversity, introducing ideas of social identities, individual differences, and how assumptions arise when we meet people different from ourselves. The... Continue Reading →
I could not believe how hard it was to wake up early again after the summer! My alarm whined like a hungry dog. I stumbled up, tightened the muscles in my legs to stop the lightheadedness, managed to gather phone and sweater and water cup. I set the water boiling for tea. I made it... Continue Reading →
Jimmy Kindree 