Art Np2

     Toni Morrison’s writing is multi-layered, thick and rich with complexity;   a person could read her novels over and over and still find something new to ponder in them.   She writes unforgettable  prose.   I wonder how she does what she does?   It must be a god given gift.      This fact is totally off topic, but Toni Morrison also has one of the most beautiful heads of hair I ever seen.  I will be examining a passage from chapter "1921" in the hardcover Borzoi version of Sula that was published in 1973 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York. Brief summary of chapter “1921” Eva Peace, Sula’s Grandmother is married to BoyBoy and they have three children, Hannah, Pearl/Eva, and Plum/Ralph. They live in the hill community of Medallion, Ohio which is called The Bottom. BoyBoy deserts the family. After saving baby Plum’s life by curing his severe constipation, Eva leaves her children with a neighbor for eighteen months...

I have had it!  I am always cussing under my breath these day because I don't believe in the whole mixed people mentality or philosophy.  This is how it is:  Human beings in the world today are a composite of many cultures.  Jews from Russia mate with Catholics from France.  Men from Puerto Rico marry women from Vietnam.  Chinese women marry Irish men.  And then the offspring from these couples end up mating and marrying one another.  And so on... that is the way it is in America.  Am I right?  We no longer live in a tribes.  So how come some people are called mixed and others are not?  I don't feel that I am a part of a mixed couple.  I will no longer use that phrase or allow others to put my family into a erroneous category because it does not accurately describe us.  That includes the term interracial. 

Unexpected Death I haven't felt like reading or writing anything in the last month.  A very good friend's nephew died and it upset me more than I expected.  I didn't really know him, but I had seen him here and there since he was a child.  The nephew was thirty-one years old and a heavy drinker.  One night his father got a phone call from a bartender who told him that his son was drunk and needed a ride home.  The father went to the bar and loaded his son in the car, but by the time they arrived home the son had passed out.  The father left the son in the car to sleep it off.  When he came out to check the son in the morning, his son was dead.  The father, my friend's brother, was in shock.  He called his parents who live nearby and 911.  When his parents arrived all they could do is look at their grandson's body and wait for the ambulance.  His whole family is heartbroken and watching them suffer is painful.  I ...

You may have read a version of this story on another page.  I keep working and changing it. "Badiha" And there came a day in Fallujah when the temperature was below fifty-five celsius and the electricity was working longer than two consecutive hours. When Bahia was twelve years old she sat snipping the ends off green beans on the front steps.  Kathem Al Saher played on the radio as her mother sang along and prepared dinner while full-throated shouts and giggles rang out from their small back yard. Badiha wanted to be back there playing with the rest of them, but she felt at her age she had to start behaving like a sensible woman.  One dreamy eye blinked as she swatted away a fat fly that buzzed too close to her smooth, soft cheeks. No one in the neighborhood paid attention to her anymore. Kids used to call her loppy-loop and Cyclops because of her missing right eye and at one time she had thought she was a monster; she was afraid to look...

The Detroit Riots of 1967 My mother said that our house could possibly be blown up and we had to be ready to leave at a moment's notice. When any of us children questioned her about what was going on she would change the subject. She just dressed us up in our best clothes and cooked a Sunday dinner of chicken, greens, and macaroni and cheese. I was to start school later that year at Glazer Elementary. My older sister was ten. I also had a two year old sister, and a one year old brother. We had just moved with our mother from an apartment in the Clairmont and Fourteenth area onto the top of a two family flat on Kendall between Rosa Parks and the John Lodge Expressway. Our new flat was about a mile from the riot area on Twelth and Clairmont. Ironically, I have very fond memories of the riot neighborhood. I remember being sent out with my older sister when I was three and she was eight to buy bologna and bread for our dinner. We wandered hand in hand over railroad tracks and crowded s...