Valleys green from big rains slowly yellow and brown back into the usual. The occasional adonis with the most toned of calves huffs uphill past us. Signs warn of snakes.
An ecologist friend quietly told my dad all these wildfires are not a bad thing but simply part of nature’s bigger project, an exhalation, an ousting of the smothering dead to make way for life. Quietly because it’s unpopular to be pro-fire amidst those who lost everything. The big picture makes us look like real jerks.
Dusty hiking trails get dustier, easier to slip on as Spring dries out. Illegally off-leash dogs get up in my pit’s face often enough that I muzzle her. She looks like Hannibal Lecter, and prematurely guilty.…
White Flights: Race, Fiction, and the American Imagination – Jess Row
Through an unflinching look at the literary canon since the Civil Rights era, Jess Row’s collection of essays, White Flights: Race, Fiction, and the American Imagination, examines the influence of whiteness on white writers’ imagination and America’s historical antipathy toward race.
As
Row deconstructs the fiction of white writers- notables like Raymond Carver,
Annie Dillard, Richard Ford and Marilynne Robinson, among others- he points out
a pattern of omission, of narratives curiously devoid of racial question, or
tension, which Row defines as nothing short of “wishful thinking as a way of
life, a way of seeing, a way of making art” (10).
Written
primarily for white readers (of which I am one), I found Row very successful
making the connection between white writers’ literary deracination and the
literal ‘white flight’ from neighborhoods as blacks moved north during the
Great Migration, seeking refuge from lynch mob terrorism and Jim Crow (9-10).…
Terry Barr’s essay collections, Don’t Date Baptists and Other Warnings from My Alabama Mother and We Might As Well Eat: How to Survive Tornadoes, Alabama Football, and Your Southern Family, are published by Third Lung Press of Hickory, NC. His essays have appeared in Under the Sun, The Bitter Southerner, Eclectica Magazine, Wraparound South, storySouth, Cleaning Up Glitter, and The Chestnut Review, among other journals. He lives in Greenville, SC, with his family, teaches Creative Nonfiction, Modern Novel, and Southern Film at Presbyterian College, and blogs on Medium.
In this episode of Cover to Cover with . . ., Barr speaks with Editor-in-Chief Jordan Blum about his work, the impact of COVID-19 on teaching and writing, some favorite films, and much more!…
Books of humorous essays can be hit or miss. Too often, the collection lacks cohesion or the humor can feel cloying. Scaachi Koul’s debut, One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter, is the rare collection in which none of the essays feel expendable. Rather, each one is well-crafted and thoroughly entertaining, balancing keen insight with effortless, acerbic wit.
Koul’s essays largely center around her identity and how it was shaped by her upbringing in Calgary as a child of Indian immigrants, the racism (both subtle and overt) she’s experienced growing up in a predominantly white neighborhood, and the sexism embedded in both Western and Indian cultures. Her experiences feeling like an outsider undoubtedly helped influence her perspective, which is uniquely her own.…
