I Can Write With Authority

I Write From Real Life. I Am An Unrepentant Eavesdropper And A Collector Of Stories. I Record Bits Of Overheard Dialogue.

When It Comes To Dressing Well, American Culture Is So Self-fulfilled That It Has Not Only Disregarded This Courtesy Of Self-presentation, But Has Turned That Disregard Into A Virtue. "we Are Too Superior/busy/cool/not-uptight To Bother About How We Look To Other People, And So We Can Wear Pajamas To School And Underwear To The Mall.

Her Blog Was Doing Well, With Thousands Of Unique Visitors Each Month, And She Was Earning Good Speaking Fees, And She Had A Fellowship At Princeton And A Relationship With Blaine - "you Are The Absolute Love Of My Life," He'd Written In Her Last Birthday Card - And Yet There Was Cement In Her Soul. It Had Been There For A While, An Early Morning Disease Of Fatigue, Shapeless Desires, Brief Imaginary Glints Of Other Lives She Could Be Living, That Over The Months Melded Into A Piercing Homesickness.

The Real Tragedy Of Our Postcolonial World Is Not That The Majority Of People Had No Say In Whether Or Not They Wanted This New World; Rather, It Is That The Majority Have Not Been Given The Tools To Negotiate This New World.

In America, Racism Exists But Racists Are All Gone. Racists Belong To The Past. Racists Are The Thin-lipped Mean White People In The Movies About The Civil Rights Era. Here's The Thing: The Manifestation Of Racism Has Changed But The Language Has Not. So If You Haven't Lynched Somebody Then You Can't Be Called A Racist. If You're Not A Bloodsucking Monster, Then You Can't Be Called A Racist. Somebody Has To Be Able To Say That Racists Are Not Monsters.