Thank you so much Taylor Branch for your postcard and note from Selma 2015. The King Era trilogy ought to be required reading. It motivated me to work for the Southern Poverty Law Center and still informs me. Hopefully my own books reflect a constant awareness of race and justice.
I love visiting some of the South’s smaller libraries–e.g. the West Feliciana Parish Library , an incubator of creativity and passion for reading. So happy to be going there on March 24 to discuss South, America.
Especially when Olivia Pass, one of the librarians, has this to say: “JUST, I mean, JUST, finished ‘South, America.’ What a wonderful novel! It’s clean, meaning no superficial stuff; literate; meaningful; and humorous. OMG! I loved it! Am looking forward to meeting this man who wrote it.”
What more can you ask?
Really stunning that President Obama is at Selma today. Fifty years ago he would have been beaten. For me, the best account of that entire era is Taylor Branch’s King trilogy. Can’t recommend it enough.
Very sad news of the death from previous injuries of the San Antonio boxer Oscar Diaz. Covered very well by Gregg Barrios.
This Washington book club is the kind of outreach that can make a tremendous difference in a community. And it costs almost nothing to be supported or hosted by a city, county, university or community college. Also a great model for reaching out to veterans.
Nice piece and great photos on the rural Cajun version of Mardi Gras. Too bad he leaves Africa out of his references to the origins (okra!) of gumbo. But that’s another story.
Apparently Mardi Gras is now getting the same damnation shade eye from the Religious Right as does Halloween. When a stranger observed me today wearing beads and smiled that I had “the Mardi Gras spirit,” a woman nearby corrected him to say it was Shrove Tuesday. When I jokingly asked what that was, she stiffened up to say it was the name of the day for Christians. To which I replied, “So is Mardi Gras” and walked off. I encountered a lot of this kind of You’re-Going-to-Hell-and-I’m-Not attitude when writing American Voudou, which deals with violently repressive white “Christian” religious/racial intolerance to African theology. I don’t think it’s an accident that the main city that celebrates Mardi Gras in the U.S. is majority black. Today I got a twinge of that same feeling. The more things change…
