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Race
Breeds
We live in perilous times. All human beings have always lived in perilous times, but the perils of our times are our own and we know them well. For several years now, a sizable group of Americans have seen Indians — or the Indian way — as an approach to the diffusion of some peril.
July 1984Worth Fighting For
An Interview With Holly Near
I just got back from Nicaragua. I hadn’t known much at all about this country that the United States has been involved with for many years. The Marines were in Nicaragua as long ago as the Thirties. How can you live in a country and not know about a place where your Marines have been for that long?
July 1984My Father’s Grandson
I called my father at his bank in Tulsa. He wasn’t there, as usual, so I left a message with his secretary, as usual. “Tell him, Helouise, that he has a new grandson.” I had to repeat the message twice, as Helouise was well aware that I was an only child and quite unmarried.
January 1983Black Reaper
We couldn’t have been more delighted, Buck and I, he in the warm arms of Mr. Boston, me in the warm arms of life in the sunny south, at a time when the shadows were hazy, the sunshine was bright, and the smell of the newly cropped bermuda grass touched my nostrils, and the days awaited me breathlessly, endlessly.
May 1982Theme For English 1200
“As a white person,” a student asks me, “are you uncomfortable teaching black literature to blacks?”
“Of course,” I answer. “Of course.”
March 1982Entering The House Of The ’Lord
For the first time I wonder if I have gone too far, overlooking too many potential danger signs in this landlord/tenant relationship, and maybe I should ask for my money back, take the lease form from the wife’s hands where it is lying and tear it into pieces, but then I decide that I am as worthy of two walls of windows and a murphy bed on swiss avenue as anyone else.
January 1982My Neighborhood
Georgia’s richest county’s finest housing project, the Berkeley Flatlands, evenly spaced mailboxes
April 1981Tchad — A Memoir
Tchad, in the front seat, turned to me in the back, waved his arms expansively and yelled above the traffic noise, “Tell us again how your grandmother barks like a dog, Linne! Tell it again!”
August 1980Fugitives
I arrive late, as usual, paper ends flapping from my briefcase, crumbs clinging to my coat after a crackers-and-cheese lunch between stoplights. Picking my way across the muddy yard from my parking place in a tow-away zone, I glance at the glassed-in central staircase of the high school to check the time.
August 1980