A 2021 publication by author Elizabeth Letts, The Ride of Her Life begins as Annie sets out for California on a November day with a few saddle bags of canned goods, a few dollars, some camping gear, her dog, and a horse.
Oh, and she’s riding the horse. Continue reading The Ride of Her Life: Maddening and Heartening in its Optimism
Consistency is important. When things begin to change too quickly for humans to adapt, we value what doesn’t shift, even if it’s not very good. In my twenties and thirties, I travelled a lot by car for various jobs. Convenience stores rank high in a short list of life’s inevitabilities among death, taxes, and lines for the lady’s room. They are inevitable. A byproduct of … Continue reading Subversive Conformity: Convenience Store Woman
Women have discovered that they cannot rely on men’s chivalry to give them justice. – Helen Keller This week, in a school district just north of Lubbock, Texas, an assignment on “Chivalry” in the thirteenth century required young women to subjugate themselves in various ways to male classmates and family members. Signatures from men and boys validated that they had followed the rules. Behavior encouraged … Continue reading Chivalry… as studied this week in Texas
Several years ago, I was home sick with a flu bug. I sat on the couch, an unwashed, huddled and miserable mass, consuming daytime History Channel content. One documentary of that long day was a documentary on The Plague. As I set, achy, feverish and bereft of the hope that I might ever feel something like “good” again, I began to imagine… “it begins like … Continue reading I Can’t Believe It Ended Like That! Themes of Hope and Despair in Seven Novels
Opposites attract. We naturally seek out people with qualities we admire, but feel we lack. The morose individual seeks the eternal optimist. The die-hard conservative pursues the bleeding-heart liberal and introverts are consistently drawn to more out-going personalities. This is one theme running through Necessary People, a 2019 novel by Anna Pitoniak. “Stella was the vine wrapped around the limbs of my tree, and even … Continue reading Necessary People… Love Gone Bad
When she reaches the ground, she looks from the old woman to me. A moment of confusion. Then recognition. I know her too, because I’ve seen traces of her in my face in the mirror. My mother. My a-ma. The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane is a 2017 novel by Lisa See that explores and contrasts the lives of the Akha people in China with … Continue reading Going Home Again: The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane
Even self-professed mean girls will say they’ve been the target of meaner girls. These women range from the misunderstood to utterly without conscience. Continue reading Like Salt in Your Coffee: Mean Girls in Fiction
It is a preventable health issue. It isn’t something that we’re waiting for a cure for. We’re waiting for political will. – Rachel Ward, Amnesty International Mother’s Day is big business. In 2018 alone, over 23 billion will be spent recognizing Mom, Grandma, favorite aunties and other female relatives and mentors. It’s ironic then, that the United States ranks so poorly in maternal health that … Continue reading Your Mother or Your Life: Maternal Health Continues to be a Hostage to Politics
“You have to find a mother inside yourself. We all do. Even if we already have a mother, we still have to find this part of ourselves inside.” Sue Monk Kidd’s coming of age novel, The Secret Life of Bees is set in 1964 just as the voting rights act is passed. Lily, the 14-year old protagonist lives with her father, T-Ray, a white peach … Continue reading The Secret Life of Bees… Growing up fast in South Carolina
“I have the nerve to walk my own way, however hard, in my search for reality, rather than climb upon the rattling wagon of wishful illusions.” – Letter from Zora Neale Hurston to Countee Cullen And her way was certainly a hard one. Their Eyes Were Watching God was first published in 1937, at the height of her success. The story, set in Florida in … Continue reading Florida… Walking my own way with Zora Neale Hurston
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