7 December, 2020 There is a pervasive argument today that writers should not represent other races, classes, genders, sexualities, disabilities, ideologies or religious persuasions in their fiction unless they have ‘authentic lived experience’ from which to draw. The argument is driven by a concern for social justice and a fear that institutions with power will
Officially, when we went on a road trip, I got out of the car and walked twenty feet from California to Nevada so he couldn’t be charged with transporting a minor across state lines. We thought this was hilarious. *** The one good grade I ever got in gym class was for modern dance. My
When I was 19, I secretly fell in love with a boy. He was 17. I first learned his body as I watched him walk across the campus green when he didn’t know I was looking—his curly dark hair, his camo jacket with all the pockets, his baggy jeans. I learned his face second, when
‘Don’t write like a housewife. And read David Sedaris.’ This was the advice my daughter gave me as she thrust a copy of his book, Let’s Discuss Diabetes With Owls into my hands. Three years later, on the night of my 49th birthday, Bec took me to see David Sedaris at Cadogan Hall in London.
Gold brings out the worst in humans, and nowhere more so than on the goldfields themselves. In 1857, far from the prying eyes of the colonial government, European miners slaughtered their Chinese counterparts, destroyed their homes, stores, temple and equipment, and largely escaped justice. Meanwhile, incarceration in barbaric mental asylums awaited other Chinese miners who
To paraphrase W. S. Gilbert, the Muslim’s lot is not a happy one. Nothing is guaranteed to quicken the pulse more than a negative Muslim headline. But before we rush to condemn or condone the Muslims, the news media, or Western culture at large, an historical perspective exists to give cause for reflection. If nothing
We stole our first vehicle at fourteen. It was our grandfather’s ’94 Chevy pickup, and Pete and I took it every night that summer without license and without permission. We’d cruise the suburbs, sometimes meeting up with girls down the road or to grab milkshakes at the 24-hour drive-thru. Anything we could think of really,
Once upon a time, a young girl, skinnier than most, plucked clay pigeons off the ground of a mostly empty rifle range while her father poured himself another beer at the lodge down the hill, just out of sight. As the brisk wind turned her spindly arms to chicken skin, she wished for a life
24 July 1964: 4:18 p.m. A man carrying a suitcase rushes down the stairs to the crowded Whites Only platformohannesburg train station. Looking straight ahead, he runs his hands through his floppy fringe and mops the sweat off his brow with the sleeve of his tweed jacket. The man bends down, sets the shabby
I became a consumer in 1967. Like those women appearing with alarming frequency on the cover of the National Enquirer who tell of having been penetrated by aliens with laser probes and sucked dry whilst hurtling through outer space at the speed of light, I remember the exact time of my induction into the consumer
