In “Reading with Patrick,” English teacher Michelle Kuo works with a student in 8th grade and then later after he has killed a man. The story brings up questions about lit’s impact.
Also posted in Baum (L. Frank), Lewis (C. S.), Whitman (Walt) | Tagged "Song of Myself", C. S. Lewis, Frederick Douglass, Gilead, Hansberry (Lorraine), Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Lorraine Hansberry, Marilynne Robinson, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, poverty, Prison, Raisin in the Sun, Walt Whitman |
The creation story in the Book of Genesis is magnificent poetry that resists the attempts of religious and scientific fundamentalists alike to reduce it to a scientific account.
In a remarkable interview with “The New York Times,” Barack Obama spoke about the importance of literature in his life. The range of his reading and the sensitivity of his responses is astounding.
Also posted in Bellow (Saul), Cixin (Liu), Diaz (Junot), Flynn (Gillian), Goff (Lauren), Hemingway (Ernest), Kerouac (Jack), Kerouac (Jack), Kingston (Maxine Hong), Lahiri (Jhumpa), Lee (Harper), Lessing (Doris), Mailer (Norman), Marquez (Gabriel Garcia), Morrison (Toni), Naipaul (V.S.), Roth (Philip K.), Shakespeare (William), Whitehead (Colson) | Tagged Barack Obama, Bend in the River, Colson Whitehead, Doris Lessing, Ernest Hemingway, Fates and Furies, Garcia Gabriel Marquez, Gilead, Gillian Flynn, Golden Notebook, Gone Girl, Jack Kerouac, Jhumpa Lahiri, Junot Diaz, Lauren Goff, Liu Cixin, Marilynne Robinson, Martha Nussbaum, Maxine Hong Kingston, Moveable Feast, Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Philip Roth, Road, Saul Bellow, Song of Solomon, Tempest, Three Body Problem, Toni Morrison, Underground Railroad, V.S. Naipaul, Warrior Woman, William Shakespeare |
Spiritual Sunday A couple of weeks ago my library reading group discussed Marilynne Robinson’s Lila, the third novel in what one member described as a triptych. I love Robinson’s depiction of the Congregationalist minister John Ames in Gilead, and Lila gives us the backstory of the woman that Ames marries as an old man. (Home, […]
The Book of Genesis, like poetry, captures truths inaccessible to science.
Marilynne’s Robinson’s novel “Home” captures some of my own experience returning home.
Novelist Marilynne Robinson takes to task both narrow-minded scientists and narrow-minded believers and holds up fiction as a powerful road to truth.
Grieving for a lost America reaches deep across the political spectrum, “Beowulf” provides a healthy response.
Marilynne Robinson turns to Whitman to argue that American Democracy’s greatness lies in how it honors the individual soul.
Marilynne Robinson I’ve been meaning to write for a while on Marilynne Robinson’s mesmerizing 2006 novel Gilead. I learned recently that it is one of Barack Obama’s favorite novels, which gives me an opportunity to explore how a work of literature impacts someone that we all have a stake in. This isn’t meant to be […]
