Best committee on campus...

30 January 2024: The Common Reading Selection Committee met today to narrow our field down to five finalists for next year's book. This is never an easy process, but consistently this is the best committee on campus. So wonderful to be surrounded by people who are passionate about good books. 

"the word 'terrorism' comes as close as any..."

22 May 2023: In No Visible Bruises: What We Don't Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us, Rachel Louise Snyer writes of the inadequacy of the term "domestic violence." She explains, "I have, for years, tried myself to coin a better term, and I've yet to conceive of anything, though I believe the word 'terrorism' comes as close as any to what such a relationship feels like from the inside" (17).

Snyder's book is this coming year's Common Reading selection, and I started it today at the vet while waiting for BabyCat to get her bandage changed. I had just read some sentences about an abuser buying the gun that he would use later that day to kill his wife, his two children, and himself--a gun he shouldn't have been able to buy. And then I found myself overhearing a conversation between a client and a tech who knew each other well and talked in that comfortable way friends do. I only overheard bits and pieces, but she said things like, "he came by and terrorized me again on Friday" and "he can get a gun at any time." The tech asked if she called the police and she said, "What for? They never do anything unless it's their family involved." They talked as if it were an everyday, common occurence--but it clearly is. 

"Terrorized," she said. More than once. 

Everyday, all around us. This won't be the easiest Common Reading, but it sure is necessary. 

Work Cited

Snyer, Rachel Louis. No Visible Bruises: What We Don't Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019.

High-impact...

4 November 2022: So cool to have Emma Copley Eisenberg visit my ENGL 301 class today. Talk about a "high-impact learning experience." 

Staying or going...

3 November 2022: Had a great conversation today with my Gender and Women's Studies students about Junot Diaz's "Drown" and that tension between staying and going (or feeling stuck versus escaping) that so many of them are so familiar with as West Virginians. "That's the gift of literature," I said, "that people from rural West Virginia can relate to a Dominican-American kid in urban New Jersey." (I've blogged about this before. It comes up often in literature classes, in fact.)

I mentioned that Emma Copley Eisenberg, the author of this year's Common Reading, The Third Rainbow Girl, make a similar point about young West Virginians in her book, specifically voiced by a Shepherd alum (a transgender man towards whom the place can seem so hostile). Tonight, during the Q&A after her lecture, Eisenberg mentioned that she think cities and rural areas are actually alike in that you often put up with a lot of misery to stay in this place you love. That point seems spot-on to me.

The Third Rainbow Girl

26 June 2022: "If every woman is a nonconsensual researcher looking into the word 'misogyny,' then my most painful and powerful work was done in Pocahontas County. It could have been done in any other place, because misogyny is in the groundwater of every American city and every American town..." --Emma Copley Eisenberg, The Third Rainbow Girl

Just finished this book--our Common Reading at Shepherd this coming year. I am not entirely sure what to think of it, but that's not a bad thing. And the lines above--which come very early in the book (page 4)--stood out to me immediately. Just so very true.

Creeping back in...

20 December 2021: My goodness, the combination of regular holiday anxiety, the weird inter-semester time, and (most importantly) Omicron has my anxiety creeping back in so hard. Trying to stay busy, stay cozy, and stay away from too much Twitter and news. 

Also glad to have lots of books on my mind today: two novels by Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton (working on my entry about her for my book), A Piece of the World, which I just finished yesterday (possible Common Reading selection), and Pregnant Girl, which I just started (another possible Common Reading selection). 

Catherine Clinton on campus

9 November 2021: Got to hear Catherine Clinton talk about her book, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom tonight. (It's this year's Common Reading.) Still so grateful to have these events back in person and for the chance to hear an important historian talk about her work. I get to have dinner with her tomorrow night, too, something I am really looking forward to.

Morning walks...

9 July 2020: “When we walk, we are brought back to ourselves again, immersing our awareness in the body and all its sensitivities, creating space for the mind to breathe and explore and play” --Andrew Forsthoefel, Walking to Listen

Finished this engaging book today and circled back to the start, typing up notes for this year's Common Reading Essay Contest prompts and thinking about how I might use it in my ENGL 204 class. Today was also a day that I got up early and took my walk before starting the "work" part of my day. While I'll never be a fan of getting up early, morning walks can be transformative, a quiet, meditative way to begin the day. (Plus, nighttime walks--the only hot summer day alternative--are more likely to be gloomy, I think?)

Walking to Listen

7 July 2020: "And then there was Addie, my Mississippi mother, and Allen, the doomsday alligator rancher. Of course, all these people were far more than the titles I've just given them, but that's taxonomy finding some kind of order in the chaos and classifying it. Why bother, in this case? Because then an amalgam of indistinguishable faces splinters off into hundreds of millions of fragments--individual human beings. The closer you look, the more varieties you find, and any goat-and-sheep dichotomy starts to look completely absurd. Americans become Mississippians, who become alligator ranchers, who become Allen, who likes hunting in the swamp on his airboat at dusk and watching Deadly Women Tuesday Marathon; who believes in goats and sheep, and probably thinks you're a goat; and who feeds you a huge breakfast in the morning anyway." --Andrew Forsthoefel, Walking to Listen

The fifty or so pages I read of Walking to Listen today really sold me on what the book is doing and it power and beauty. That passage above ("goats" and "sheep" are a reference to end-times theology) especially moved me. I've got about 150 pages left and am eager to see what's in store for Andrew.

Trying to remember this...

30 June 2020: "I'd already a number of exceptionally kind people on my walk, so many that the kindness was ceasing to be exceptional." --Andrew Forsthoefel, Walking to Listen

Working my way through Forsthoefel's book. The audacity of his project is kind of amazing. But insights like the one above serve as good reminders of something I believe but sometimes forget.

"Here for It, or How to Save Your Soul in America"

29 June 2020: "And if ever there was a time to play the national anthem, it's then. It's in this place where something new is being built, where people are united in one goal, with one voice, where the future is hard to make out but, yes, it's there. We're there. Better and more complicated. That's the only country I can survive in. I don't live in that country, but every day by existing, by speaking, by loving, by writing, I make a vow to get there, step-by-step." --R. Eric Thomas

I finished Here for It early today--just after midnight--and closed it with that sad satisfaction that comes at the end of every great book. Thomas finished the book before our current moment of dual (linked) crises, but it is amazingly such a gift for this time. It is so hard not to get bogged down in the hopelessness that seems to surround us right now. But Thomas looks at hopelessness and brings in what has always helped us endure in America--love, family, friendship, joy. Those don't erase the bad parts, but they give us a kind of antidote, or at least to kind of squint into the distance to see something better. That is--and has long been--a profoundly moving part of American identity.

Starting another book today that in some ways couldn't be more different: Walking to Listen, by Andrew Forsthoefel, this year's Common Reading at Shepherd. But already, I can see some connections.

And whose voice was in my head as I read the words quoted above--from Thomas's penultimate chapter, about his wedding? Of course, it was Walt. And whose book does Forsthoefel carry with him on his journey across America? Do I even have to write it?

American War

22 December 2019: "They didn't understand, they just didn't understand. You fight the war with guns, you fight the peace with stories." --Omar El Akkad, American War

Finished up this interesting book today. I am inclined to agree with this Guardian review. It's a powerful book, though its ultimate pessimism left me cold. (That probably says as much about me as it does about the book.)

Break reading...

16 December 2019: Started two very different books today. The first, American War, is the title I am reading as a possible Common Reader for next year. Honestly, the description alone didn't appeal to me at all--seemed too depressing when I need light--but it appealed to me more than anything else on the list. I'm about 40 pages in and find it really fascinating so far.

The second, My Life as a Goddess, has moved from my coffee table to my dining room table to my night stand and back again since early November, at least. (I want to use it in my Gender and Women's Studies seminar this spring.) But I finally got into it today. A gosh darn delight so far.

Concussion

1 July 2019: Started Concussion, this year's Common Reading at Shepherd, this afternoon. I am about 70 pages in and it's a quick read. So far, I find myself (pleasantly) surprised at what a complicated and kind of weird person Bennet Omalu is. The depiction of his depression is particularly interesting, as is his adjustment to America.

And then there's his name (first, middle, last) which means (in order): "Blessed," "Life is the greatest gift of all," and "If you know, come forth and speak" (26-7). Knowing (more or less) where this story is going, that gave me chills.

The Girl with Seven Names

1 October 2018: Shepherd's Common Reading program was able to bring Hyeonseo Lee to campus this evening to talk about her book. Hearing her speak was quite powerful, especially as she admitted that her hopes for Korean unification in her life time have diminished in the past year.

The Girl with Seven Names

16 May 2018: The Girl with Seven Names, by Hyeonseo Lee, is the Common Reading for the upcoming year at Shepherd. I started it this morning and, about eighty pages in, I find it quite compelling. It is making me think about The Handmaid's Tale (the TV series more than the novel). Sometimes when I watch the show and take in the world that is Gilead, I think, "Is this a bit too much? Would a government really be able to pull of this level of control, down to eliminating writing and having people so thoroughly indoctrinated?" Those are silly questions to ask, I know, considering what human history has shown us, but I still sometimes find myself incredulous that such things can actually happen. This book, though, set in North Korea, is stunning in its depiction of how such systems work. It is, in that way, a very dark book, a darkness enhanced by its timely topic given the day's news.

There are moments of light, though, a welcome reminder of how love can shape us even in such difficult circumstances. Lee's depiction of her parents' relationship--their deep love for each other--is quite touching. As she explains, her mother's family opposed the idea of the marriage, even insisting she marry another man. Yet "[l]ove...was setting a course of its own, cutting through my grandmother's best-laid plans, like water finding its way to the sea." Lovely.

"two people..."

28 February 2018: "What I know is I feel like I am two people. One wants nothing more than to be clean. And one wants to dial up a dealer." --Louise Valentine, a speaker at a panel that I attended tonight on campus entitled "Intervention & Addiction – An Ethics Dialogue."

The entire panel was terrific: interesting and important. But I could have listened to Ms. Valentine, who works with harm-reduction programs for addicts/users, talk about her work and her own experiences for hours.

Of course, whenever I attend any event like this, Ryan is always on my mind and tonight was no exception. He's been on my mind more than usual today; earlier in the day, I brought him up in class as we finished our discussion of The Awakening and Edna's suicide. Having him on my mind these days isn't necessarily happy or sad...it just depends. Today, I guess, the memories and motivations for thinking about him were more sad than happy, but that's okay.

The Sunflower

2 January 2018: In the closing section of Part I of The Sunflower, Simon Wiesenthal, after recounting the story of a dying SS officer asking for forgiveness for his crimes, writes, "You, who have just read this sad and tragic episode in my life, can mentally change places with me and ask yourself the crucial question, 'What would I have done?'" (98). It is a fascinating question, almost impossible (for me) to answer. Part II, “The Symposium,” collects responses from dozens of experts (from various disciplines, backgrounds, regions, and religions).

I read The Sunflower as part of my once-a-year, over-the-winter-break Common Reading Selection Committee work. It is important and unsettling and has kept me thinking about it for days. I suspect it will stay in my mind for a very long time. I have no real idea what I would have done in Wiesenthal’s situation. And it is fascinating to read all the different perspectives in the Symposium. I learned a lot about the differences, for instance, between Jewish and Christian ideas about forgiveness. I am glad to have read it.

“From Prison Inmate to Lawyer & Scholar”

18 September 2017: "Every great re-entry story that I've seen involved a community." --Shon Hopwood, speaking at a Common Reading event today, talking about what helps released prisons find success after their incarceration.

This was a great lecture and discussion. My list of possible sound bites for today's post is a long one, but the comment posted above, which came up towards the end of the discussion, is standing out to me most as I reflect on what I heard. Communities (of all kinds) need to play a role in helping these people. In doing so, we are helping ourselves, too. Seems so simple...

Anthony Ray Hinton

7 October 2016: I have been to a lot of terrific events at Shepherd, but I've never been to an event like the one I attended on Thursday. Anthony Ray Hinton, who spent 30 years on death row for a crime he didn't commit, was like no speaker I'd seen before. I was riveted, as was the entire audience.

Check out this article about his talk--an article written by one of my all-time favorite former students, by the way.

And cheers to Shepherd's Common Reading Program. I am proud to have been a part of this committee since my second year at Shepherd and I continue to be excited by the work we do.