after long days trafficking in what can often feel like platitudes and obvious and predictable reaction, i crave nuanced, human, real characters so badly. i want to spend my time with people who grapple with the big questions and the banalities of the everyday and are willing to say: i do not know. and: i have prejudices, and i have shame, and i have issues i’m still sorting out. and: life is sometimes a confounding mystery. i crave that honesty so badly, and i’ve found that in danzy senna’s short stories. the cool part i suppose is that it was only after starting this book tonight that i realized how deep my hunger is.
i also crave linguistic precision and political directness, and i think i’ve found that in naomi shihab nye. i love these lines from “making a fist”: “How do you know if you are going to die?”/I begged my mother./ We had been traveling for days./ With strange confidence she answered,/ “When you can no longer make a fist.”// Years later I smile to think of that journey,/the borders we must cross separately,/stamped with our unanswerable woes.”
oh stories, oh words, oh poetry. always the salve and my salvation.
