In preparing for a class on gothic elements in fiction, I pulled an old book from my shelves. I’d gone searching for Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, but I found myself drawn to We Have Always Lived in the Castle instead. Have you read this book? I don’t think I’ve read it in more than …
The media is atwitter with news about a forthcoming book that contains damning information about the president and the president’s inner circle. Much of that information comes from a man who was, until very recently, part of that inner circle. Steve Bannon spilled his rotten guts to Michael Wolff, the author of the soon-to-be-released tell-all …
Give anyone enough time and they will break your heart. I am a southerner. I live in Denver now, but I spent the first 21 years of my life in Mississippi. I first read Joyce Carol Oates’s short story, “How I Contemplated the World from the Detroit House of Correction and Began My Life Over …
It’s Banned Books Week and organizations from the American Booksellers Association to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (who knew?) are commemorating our right to read without censorship. When we think of banned books, we often think of books forbidden by the government ala the plot of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, but that isn’t really how …
My husband is a whiz at fast-forwarding through television commercials. I am not so quick to the button. When he travels, as he’s doing now, I see a lot of random advertisements while I’m watching Jeopardy! or the news. There is an ad running now that is both relentlessly terrifying and ridiculous. It’s an ad …
Last week I sat in the Memphis airport and waited to board a United Airlines flight. My dog was on my lap. My dog is a 10-pound, 10-year-old, double dapple miniature dachshund named Maui. Most people love Maui. She is small and cute and charming. When Maui travels with me she spends the plane ride in …
The current president’s proposed budget eliminates funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, abolishes the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, guts the Environmental Protection Agency, and slices community block grants to the bone. It gives more money to the military and, I assume, border walls. There doesn’t seem to be much logic behind the proposal, just a lot …
Like so many people across the country and around the world, I marched this weekend. My husband and I joined the crowd of about 200,000 men, women, and children in Denver. We walked and chanted and laughed and waved as we ran into people we knew from various places. We failed to meet up with …
As I mentioned in this space last week, I’m currently reading The Storied South, a book that compiles interviews from southern writers, photographers, musicians, painters, and scholars. In the sections featuring Margaret Walker and Alice Walker, both women talk about the influence of Zora Neale Hurston. It’s been many years since I read Their Eyes Were Watching God. I …
On the day after Christmas, my husband, my mother, and I went to a nearby theater for a matinee of La La Land. On Christmas Eve we’d attended a live performance of the musical Finding Neverland, the story behind the story of Peter Pan. So a movie musical homage to Hollywood seemed like the perfect capper to our holiday entertainment. Plus, …