Literature and Poetry
Rose Madeline Mula's Long Live Laughter!
Nothing captures my heart more firmly than endearing but flawed characters with whom I can identify, an improbable but somehow still believable story, and — especially — a clever punch line. A writer who can make me laugh gets my vote every time. Sure, occasionally I enjoy curling up with one of the Bronte sisters, Hemingway, Du Maurier, or Fitzgerald. And sometimes I try to match wits with James Patterson, David Baldacci, or John Grisham — or even allow myself to be terrorized by a Stephen King horror tale. But for the most part, I love a writer who tickles my funny bone. more »
Jo Freeman's Review of The Road to Healing: A Civil Rights Reparations Story in Prince Edward County, Virginia
Jo Freeman writes: Reparations for slavery has been in the air this year. It comes with lots of questions. In this book, Woodley answers them for one group who suffered directly from white supremacy. In 1959 the Prince Edward County school board closed its public schools rather than integrate them. Most white students were able to attend private academies for whites only. Black students had to leave the county or go without an education. Not until 1964 did the Supreme Court rule that the county had violated the students constitutional rights and ordered the public schools to reopen. Forty years later a Virginia professor calculated that these five years without public schools resulted in 2,202 black and 258 white youths receiving no formal education in their lifetimes. more »
During Poetry Month, A Joan Cannon Poem and Math and Metaphor: Flashes of Inspiration Require for Universes to be Disclosed
Joan L. Cannon wrote:
Archetypes, mysteries, simple clues
that only fingers and toes, sticks and stones
and flashes of inspiration require
for universes to be disclosed ...
symbols for functions and formulae
for proof; logic so easy for some —
why am I innumerate? more »
Jo Freeman's Book Review of The Women’s Suffrage Movement by Sally Roesch Wagner
By the time the 19th Amendment was added to the US Constitution on August 26, 1920, there were only eight states in which no woman could vote for anything. Sally Roesch Wagner has devoted her life to understanding this "journey of courage and cowardice; of principles and capitulation; of allies and racists." In this collection of dozens of reports and statements from primary sources, she allows the participants to speak for themselves. Her first section shows how women lost the vote before they gained it. Her documents argue that "women had full suffrage in Massachusetts from 1691 to 1780." In many places, ownership of property was a sufficient qualification to vote, regardless of sex or race. more »