FANON by John Edgar Wideman, (Houghton Mifflin Books: 2008)

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” (William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun)

    This review is tainted. I think it would be fair to say that I have lost critical objectivity in reading Fanon: it’… Read full post »

When Sarah Palin made her idiotic remark about having more experience because she had been a mayor and Obama had simply been a community organizer, she brought  back a flood of memories. This is my story of community organizing in 1981, when I was 18, an determined to save the world. … Read full post »

No words today; just four videos that need to be seen. "Freedom" by George Michael; Mosh by Eminem, and "Hope" by Barack Obama. Let the three messages sink in and take action. I know I'm stoked this morning to do campaign work this weekend.

Oh, and to quote the… Read full post »

  

 In March of this year, I moved out of the house that I had fallen in love with the first time I walked through it. I had spent a summer looking with the agent, nervous about my ability as a single mother to buy a house, but with the help… Read full post »

Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen." ("Where they burn books, they will ultimately also burn people.")

Heinrich Heine, 1797-1856

This week is the American Library's Association's Banned Books Week. I know that we're all focused on the economic clusterfuck and the… Read full post »

I, Lorraine Berry, assert my right to privacy as a basic human right that I will not allow to be compromised by my political party, which has allowed notions of privacy to be hijacked by those who call them 'moral' values.

We are allowing ourselves to be… Read full post »

I mentioned in an earlier blog post that I supply my students with links to foreign newspapers in English. Thought I'd post the list here, in case anyone's interested. Haven't updated the list since January 2007.

This is an incomplete list of newspapers (some daily, some weekly) that appear in… Read full post »

I assume you recognize this image. It's become such an icon, a short-hand for referring to what we have perpetuated in our name in our "War on Terror." (Always be suspicious when you're going to war against abstract nouns or emotions--it makes for messy foreign policy.)

The iconography seeme… Read full post »

Hillary Clinton and Cecile Richards report in today's NY Times op-ed section that the Bush administration is, once again, attempting to block women's access to basic reproductive care.

The immortal Ms. Dickinson gave me my words for today. 

 XXXII

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must… Read full post »

The "F" word. Not the one you're thinking of, but fascism. I want to talk about one part of fascism and take a look at parallels in our country at the moment. And why, ever since Sarah Palin has appeared on the scene, these arguments have been chasing around in my… Read full post »

 I'm a symbol, y'all. All of a sudden, the press has rediscovered Freud's asinine question: "What do women want?" And they think that because women are flocking to see Sarah Palin, they've figured it out. 

 I'm tired of my symbolic value. I'm tired that because of the idea that becaus… Read full post »