Sunday, June 19, 2011

#49

From Sherman Alexie's article written recently on why it's okay for YA Lit to be brutally honest. He is the author of the YA Novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, based on his childhood growing up on a reservation.

"When I think of the poverty-stricken, sexually and physically abused, self-loathing Native American teenager that I was, I can only wish, immodestly, that I’d been given the opportunity to read “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.” Or Laurie Halse Anderson’s “Speak.” Or Chris Lynch’s “Inexusable.” Or any of the books that Ms. Gurdon believes to be irredeemable. I can’t speak for other writers, but I think I wrote my YA novel as a way of speaking to my younger, irredeemable self. Of course, all during my childhood, would-be saviors tried to rescue my fellow tribal members. They wanted to rescue me. But, even then, I could only laugh at their platitudes. In those days, the cultural conservatives thought that KISS and Black Sabbath were going to impede my moral development. They wanted to protect me from sex when I had already been raped. They wanted to protect me from evil though a future serial killer had already abused me. They wanted me to profess my love for God without considering that I was the child and grandchild of men and women who’d been sexually and physically abused by generations of clergy.

What was my immature, childish response to those would-be saviors?
“Wow, you are way, way too late.”
....

And now I write books for teenagers because I vividly remember what it felt like to be a teen facing everyday and epic dangers. I don’t write to protect them. It’s far too late for that. I write to give them weapons–in the form of words and ideas-that will help them fight their monsters."

Saturday, June 18, 2011

#48

“Once in a while it really hits people that they don’t have to experience the world in the way they have been told to.”

Alan Keightley


Friday, June 17, 2011

#47

There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation. There is no one here but us chickens, and so it has always been: a people busy and powerful, knowledgeable, ambivalent, important, fearful, and self-aware; a people who scheme, promote, deceive, and conquer; who pray for their loved ones, and long to flee misery and skip death. It is a weakening and discoloring idea, that rustic people knew God personally once upon a time- or even knew selflessness or courage or literature- but that is too late for us. In fact, the absolute is available to everyone in every age. There never was a more holy age than ours, and never a less.

Annie Dillard, For the Time Being

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Friday, June 10, 2011

#45

I knew that no one comes holier than anyone else, that nowhere is better than anywhere else. I knew that the resurrection of the mind was possible. I knew that no matter how absurd and ironic it was, acknowledging death and the finite was what gave you life and presence. You might as well make it good. Nature, family, children, cadavers, birth, rivers in which we pee and bathe, splash and flirt and float memorial candles- in these you would find holiness.

Anne Lamott, Grace (Eventually) Thoughts on Faith

Thursday, June 9, 2011

#44


There is now, living in New York City, a church-sanctioned hermit, Theresa Mancuso, who wrote recently, "The thing we desperately need is to face the way it is."

Annie Dillard, For the Time Being

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

#43


I finally figured out that I had a choice: I could suffer a great deal, or not, or for a long time. Or I could have the combo platter: suffer, breathe, pray, play, cry, and try to help people. There was a meaning in pain; it taught you how to survive with a modicum of grace when you did not get what you wanted.

Anne Lamott, Grace (Eventually)

Saturday, June 4, 2011

#42

A long time ago I read Jack Kerouac's essential for prose. Four of them, in particular, have provided me with heart for the path:

Accept loss forever
Be submissive to everything, open, listening
No fear or shame in the dignity of your experience, language, and knowledge
Be in love with your life

Believe me, you, too, can find yourself inside the huge terrain of writing. No one is so odd as to be left out.

Now, please, go. Write your asses off.

-Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones

Friday, June 3, 2011

#41

Make a line, write a sentence. See what happens.

-George Crane