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    The Sun InterviewBy Judith HertogTo RemainRaja Shehadeh on Living through Destruction in Palestine

    I have been thinking that people all over the world these days are feeling a sense of despair because, like me, they are seeing the destruction of the world as they knew it. But it has occurred to me that the real destruction of my world happened in 1948, when the Palestinians lost Palestine.

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Sheryl St. Germain

Sheryl St. Germain’s most recent book is Let It Be a Dark Roux: New and Selected Poems, and her collection of lyric essays Navigating Disaster is forthcoming from Louisiana Literature Press. She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and directs the MFA program in creative writing at Chatham University. A native of New Orleans, she says her favorite place in the world is the Atchafalaya Swamp in south Louisiana.

Essays, Memoirs & True Stories

A Country Where You Once Lived

It starts when you’re thirteen, and those tight shorts make your crotch wet when you ride your bike. You like these shorts, the way they make you feel this new way: sexy. You fall asleep at night thinking about sex. You listen to songs that encourage you to think about sex, and you discover you can even think about it at church and in the classroom without anyone knowing, if you keep a certain demeanor and cross your legs a certain way.

January 2012
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