My meandery re-reading of Audre Lorde’s essays began with musings on her birthday, followed by “Notes from a Trip to Russia” and “Poetry Is Not a Luxury”. “Even if you’re new to Audre Lorde, you’ve probably seen this passage of hers quoted: “I was going to die, if not
This week Bill is hosting Australian Women Writers Week for Generation Four (loosely, writers who began to publish in the ‘60s, ‘70s’ and ‘80s, but do follow the link for more details and the thoughtful commentary on characteristics of that time period’s innovations) and because he loves details that
“All of us are better when we are loved.” The film Reading Alistair MacLeod begins with this quotation. It’s a lovely way to summarize his oeuvre. In the film, Colm Tóibín speaks of the process of discovering MacLeod’s work through editing the Modern Library’s Best 200 Writers project; he
Rereading Cat’s Eye while rereading Rosemary Sullivan’s biography of Margaret Atwood emphasized the parallels between the narrator’s and author’s childhoods. I was a teenager when I read Cat’s Eye for the first time; I would have had no idea that Elaine’s childhood of lakes and insects was Peggy’s childhood
“This is the way it’s done, isn’t it? This is how other people do it.” How other people live their lives, that is. When Carol Shields tells the story of Larry Weller’s life, it begins with his having picked up somebody else’s coat and it ends with a party.
