Category: Essays
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Demon Copperhead
Demon Copperhead, written by Barbara Kingsolver, is about a boy who was born with the ingrained destitution of generational misfortune. His mother was addicted to drugs, oscillating in-and-out of rehab programs, and his father was dead, leaving Demon with only his visual likeness and his name. No memories. Set in a coal mining town in
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Their eyes were watching god
A contemporary to Richard Wright’s Black Boy, I reread Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. I was unaware of the discourse that compared the two until reading the forward of TEWWG written by Edwidge Danticat. In it, she discuses some of the criticism between the two works mainly considering the broader social focus
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Black Boy
Spoiler Alert: Black Boy is an autobiography written by Richard Wright. With added fictional elements, he narrates his impoverished life in Jim Crow South as well as the different kind of struggle he endures when relocating up North. To be honest, I didn’t expect to enjoy the novel as much as I did. I was
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30 days in a Shack
30 days with one stove plate, one pot, some bowls, a knife, a spoon, and a fork. No refrigerator, and largely at the mercy of whatever happened to be fresh at the market. It was a challenge I held for myself, both to save money on food during my long term traveling and to see
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Dia de los Muertos
People typically think of Mexico when it comes to Dia de los Muertos, but the holiday is also widely celebrated in Guatemala, where I so happened to find myself during the spooky season. Dia de los Muertos is celebrated the first two days in November to honor dead loved ones. The first day is for
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The Farm in New Mexico
At dawn you could see the town in the distance. Right beneath the rising sun, the lights twinkled as if the Milky Way itself had come to kiss the earth. The roosters wrestled with the morning silence to awaken the day from its slumber, and of course the roosters won. So, through the gentle coax
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The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Sometimes we have to go digging ourselves in order to gain our own understanding instead of relying on parroted perception. We may find consensus, or we may stumble upon a different perspective. A while back I read The Autobiography of Malcolm X and wanted to discuss my thoughts. The autobiography was released in 1965, retelling
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I Bought a Bike
I don’t think my parents know how to ride a bike. And if they do, I have never seen it. My sister and I had sorta taught each other how to ride. I remember my mom had brought home a bike for no reason at all which means it must have been either cheap or