Dear Readers of TWB, This is an essay from the archives, regarding my parents. For the next few days, my mother is going to take
Tag: appalachia
The Holy Spirit of My Uncle’s Cojones, Part 3
In this part of the novel, you get a real taste of what some of us call “internalized racism.” This is when a non-white person
The Holy Spirit of My Uncle’s Cojones, Part 2
Tony and his Salvadoran-Appalachian family attend his uncle Jack’s funeral, where the mourners aren’t mourning–either the men are running in just to make sure he’s
Audio Book: The Holy Spirit of My Uncle’s Cojones, Part 1
In the first pages of the novel, we meet Antonio “Tony” McCaugh Villalobos, an Appalachian-Salvadoran writer living in Knoxville, Tennessee, and far from his Salvadoran
TWB Podcast: What Is Aesthetics? And Why Should a Writer Care?
In class, we talk a lot about aesthetics, or the study of art–both appreciating it and creating it. It’s something the writer (the literary writer)
The Rules of Racism: You Can Only Speak One Language (and it damn well better be English)
In class, I teach how creative writing can rouse memory, strong emotions, sharp images, and that, if a student keeps writing, she will surprise herself