Last night at dinner, my nine year-old daughter asked, "Why did we have slavery?" She has a knack for asking pointed questions, usually while we’re eating and my husband isn’t around to help me out with the answers. Dozens of moral and philosophical answers ticked through my … [Read more...]
Welcome to my family!
My earliest memories of my paternal grandfather, Martin Luther Ford, are of him sitting on his porch in the projects in the French Quarters of New Orleans. He was as white as any white man I’d ever seen, but I never questioned why he looked so different from my brothers and … [Read more...]
Post Racial America? Not Yet.
Not only can you be arrested for driving while black, but add opening the door to your own house while black to the list of punishable offenses. At least that seems to be the charge in Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s case. The renown African American scholar (he's responsible for the … [Read more...]
Remember the Time
When Michael Jackson died on Thursday, it made me think of my classmate, John. He invited me to his junior prom when I was a lowly sophomore. I wore an over priced black and white gown with long fingerless lace gloves. John dressed like Michael Jackson in the Billie Jean … [Read more...]
Thank you, John Updike
I met John Updike at a party celebrating the publication of a tome he edited, The Best American Short Stories of the Century. Okay, "met him" might be a slight overstatement. We were in the same room together and I was standing next to my agent when she shook his hand and said a … [Read more...]
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