Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl - Age 9 Langston Hughes and I go back to fourth grade. Mrs. Slattery's class. That was year I challenged the notion of who, I think, I knew myself to be. I tried to be loud, bold, and whatever else I thought the cool kids were. [...]
Tag: literary
Mommy, What Does Nigger Mean?
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl - Age 8 I borrow my title from Gloria Naylor's essay of the same name. In it she examines the first time she remembers hearing the word--really hearing it--in the third grade. The experience she describes, in some ways, parallels my own. Certainly, I grew up hearing [...]
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I Can Write My Name and Some Other Words Too
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl - Age 7 By age 7, my twin and I were members of the Look-It-Up Club. We had a collection of encyclopoedias called The Book of Knowledge and would pour through them during "Quiet Time." "Quiet time" was time Mommy set aside mostly during summer breaks. It [...]
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Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl
I read somewhere that as an adult you become whomever you were at age 7. Part of me thinks: scary thought. The 7 year old I was—always trying to write the longest story in Mrs. Fountain’s class—with the neatest handwriting (we received a grade for penmanship) is not wholly unlike the woman I have become. [...]
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Know Samuel Yette? Now You Do.
Samuel F. Yette, 81, a journalist, author and educator who became an influential and sometimes incendiary voice on civil rights, died Jan. 21 at the Morningside House assisted-living facility in Laurel. He had Alzheimer's disease. In a career spanning six decades, Mr. Yette (pronounced "Yet") worked for many news organizations and government agencies and held [...]
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Blog Challenge 29: Thinking Ahead
Day 29: Describe your future plans and goals. I plan to get a phD, visit Africa, tidy up the place, fall in love, publish Marrow (to great acclaim), run a sub-4 marathon, and achieve full lotus—not necessarily in that order.
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Blog Challenge Day 21: Shawty of the Year goes to February
Day 21: List the goals you want to complete by the end of this month. 1. Finish the books I'm supposed to be reading. 2. Finish this blog challenge. 3. Save some money. 4. Submit some work for publication. 5. Create something.
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I do it because…
Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Amherst, VA May 2006 I can’t stop. Because my outside voice is quieter than my inside voice. Because my sisters found my journal, read it, and laughed. Because it never makes sense and I prefer order to chaos. I'm stubborn. Because I can shape chaos into order if I [...]
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My bad…
So I was watching Jeopardy the other night. The contestant offers a response to the question on the board. Alex Trebeck is, like, "Yes, select." Gasps and disorder come from the peanut gallery. Another contestant buzzes in to answer. The other contestant pronounces the response correctly. Alex directs his eyes to Other Contestant, "Yes, the [...]
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Let That Be the Story
" Don't forget who you are...and where you stand in the struggle." So Much Things to Say -- Robert Nesta Marley Long time; no talk, yeah? Still on my overly punctuating game you’ll notice from the three pieces of it in that short not-really-a-sentence. Pardon my geekiness: that ain’t changed. My address has—whew-ew! Fat stats [...]
darlene anita scott 