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Sunbeams

Everybody remembers the first time they were taught that part of the human race was Other. . . . It’s as though I told you that your left hand is not part of your body.

Toni Morrison

Moving On

A mother’s memories, a child’s fears, a dead man’s secrets

Praise Song For The Day

A Poem for Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration

On Becoming A Cat

Please understand: the external metamorphosis comes only at the very end, after a long, sustained effort. There is a lot of inner work you have to do before then. Also there is luck involved.

Survivor

Do I need to go into what turns an eleven-year-old into such a stoic: embarrassed to be sentimental, determined to be detached?

The Natural Order Of Hebrew School

A low-grade, persistent terror plagued me throughout the summer before sixth grade, because in June I’d found out I was to spend the next year in Rabbi Friedberg’s class at my Orthodox Jewish Hebrew school.

Sunbeams

The importance and unimportance of the self cannot be exaggerated.

R.H. Blyth

Sunbeams

It was the last day of school, and I was walking with my dad. . . . Suddenly, he paused, looked at me intently, and said, “Son, you’re a black male, and that’s two strikes against you.” To the general public, anything that I did would be perceived as malicious and deserving of severe punishment, and I had to govern myself accordingly. I was seven years old.

Robert Stephens