Tag Archives: Gilead

Robinson: Love, Sympathy, Identification

By Robin Bates | Published: October 7, 2020

Marilynne Robinson’s fiction is, as she puts it, “an exercise in the capacity for imaginative love, or sympathy, or identification.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged common humanity, Jack, Marilynne Robinson, Martha Nussbaum | Comments closed

A Teacher, Lit, & a Jailed Student

By Robin Bates | Published: November 16, 2017

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.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Song of Myself", C. S. Lewis, Frederick Douglass, 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 | Comments closed

The President Who Loved Literature

By Robin Bates | Published: January 16, 2017

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.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Barack Obama, Bend in the River, Colson Whitehead, Doris Lessing, Ernest Hemingway, Fates and Furies, Garcia Gabriel Marquez, 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 | Comments closed

Acknowledging the Mysteries of Creation

By Robin Bates | Published: June 24, 2012

Novelist Marilynne Robinson takes to task both narrow-minded scientists and narrow-minded believers and holds up fiction as a powerful road to truth.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Marilynne Robinson, Spirituality, When I Was a Child I Read Books | Comments closed

Obama Finds a Balm in Gilead

By Robin Bates | Published: September 7, 2010

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 […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Barack Obama, Marilynne Robinson, politics | Comments closed