Tag: appalachia
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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 with her words. Something will come out that she hadn’t planned, an insight, the true emotion over whatever it was she wrote down. She might cry. She might bang the…
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Escaping the Monolingual Cage of America
According to the above photo, I’d been out drinking the night before. I don’t know what my first Spanish word was, but I do recall an image, ever so slight, of me on the toilet, yelling, “Mamá, I just finished caca-ing!” My mother has assured me that I could say much more than caca, that…
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How To Tell Your Kid There’s No Santa Clause
One Christmas long ago my Appalachian father, Ralph, took his revolver, climbed on the roof, shot once into the woods, came back in and said, “Sorry folks, but looks like old Santa just committed suicide.” It was a real hoot. The whole family got it. I was a kid, but didn’t believe in Santa Claus…
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After You Finish Writing Your Novel
I haven’t written on this blog for over two weeks because I was finishing up a novel. Finishing up sounds like I was cleaning the kitchen after a big meal. Better to say, I haven’t written here for two weeks because I’ve been wrestling a python. This one was tough. It took three years to…
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My Guns, Part 2: My Blackbirds
I was both a city and country mouse, living between my father’s deep-Appalachian world of sharecroppers, hunters, and, yes, moonshine, and the bustling metropolis of Rogersville, Tennessee, population around 5,100. I grew up in a small, middle-class suburb on the edge of town, a place where people kept their grass cut and their children played…