Month: April 2018
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Why did they murder my father?
My mother, Amanda, continues with her memoir–and the questions of why her father was murdered. My grandmamá Martina’s servants gossiped about my father, Pilar Reyes, and his murder. He had been the ninth of twelve children, all who lived in Berlín, the town where I was born, in the northern mountains of El Salvador. They…
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A Letter to My Generation: We f**ked up.
I’m teaching Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale now, and it just hit me–it’s not about feminism. I mean, yeah it is. Most everyone knows the overall plot: it’s a dystopian novel, in which a zealot, religious military takes over the United States and subjugates all women, making a number of them into Handmaids. They’re the ones who…
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Who’s Driving That Damn Car?
I don’t know why, but the end of spring semester at the university is excruciating, for everyone. I talk with my colleagues, they’re all worn out from teaching. The students are exhausted. If you look into one’s eyes, you’ll see the images of seven to ten unwritten essays floating around in her skull. We are…
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Brian Greene, String Theory, and the Fabric of the cosmos. Made Easy.
I interviewed Brian Greene a few years back, about his book The Fabric of the Cosmos. Now, I know this isn’t about creative writing, but the creative writer is always looking into other subjects and fields of study in order to feed her own work. And Dr. Greene is fascinating! My mind got bent all sorts of…
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“They killed him. They’ll kill her too.”
After reading his Bible in the mornings in his rose garden, my grandfather Papa Polo walked three miles into the country with an empty pail in his hand. He kept a young cow which gave fresh milk for all of us. He handed the pail to the cook to boil before serving it at our breakfast; the…