This is a screed (Google it you lazy so and so). This is not a glass half empty, whine from the nether regions. This is a glass done been drained empty by slant drilling moisture pirates manifesto. This is me warming up in the bullpen for a series of missives about missed opportunities and what […]
Archives for January 2014
Tiny Fire: The Eastside Years
1 MOTHER CHASING ME THROUGH the apartment parking lot, pregnant. Her belly, round like a basketball, my sister in it. Me looking back and running, finger pointing at my mother, her stern eyes, wet with anger, the small me laughing out loud, Kassandra cursing me from the womb, years later I would put her in […]
Conversation With An Immigration Reform Protestor
GONZALO SANTOS WAS TIRED, EXCITED, passionate when he called me about the Wednesday’s immigration reform protests in Bakersfield, Calif. He and other demonstrators followed several U.S. Congressmen to a country club, and then to a farmer’s dirt field, as continued pressure on lawmakers to re-write a system of immigration laws, Santos says are “woefully outdated.” […]
En Route To Fiction Writing
ADVERTISING, WHERE I COME FROM, is fast-paced, challenging and stimulating. Ad people tend to be infectious, out-there types with quick, fertile minds and eclectic interests. Everyone is constantly in motion, juggling multiple projects that involve different industries, target audiences and media, and is racing to meet the next tight deadline. Success depends on knowing and […]
The Art Of Resemblance In Nonfiction
When I walked into the apartment of memoirist Alan Kaufman in Lower Nob Hill around 2011, I noticed paintings covering his walls. I’d already read his nearly 500-page memoir, Drunken Angel. The book chronicles how he became a writer and drunk (and how he recovered from alcoholism). There was nothing about him being a painter. How could he […]
The Stones, The Beasties, and My Daughter’s Voice: A Poet’s Favorite Live Bands
GRANDADDY PLAYED TO A CROWD of friends and loyal fans in Modesto, California sometime before Jason Lytle dismantled the band. It was a tiny bar on south Ninth Street. Some very happy people were treated to hits from Sumday and gems from Earlimart, who were on hand for the party. A favorite lyric, from “The Group Who Couldn’t […]
The Deep End
TUCKED MY HAIR UNDER my daisy-covered swim cap until my scalp stretched so tight my face hurt. Mom said I had to wear a rubber swim cap because girl hair clogged pool drains. In beginner swim class, mostly I held on to the side in the shallow end, kicked and blew bubbles for a pretty […]
English Only?
IT WAS AUTUMN in suburban Richmond. Cheerful, acute voices overwhelmed the muted sounds of falling leaves. “Córrele Guillermo,” yelled Elena to her toddler. “Te tengo aquí unas galletitas.” Just next to her, a round, middle-aged face surfaced from behind a USA Today. With deepening, fresh wrinkles, he glanced and gruntled, “In this park we only […]
Writer Turf Wars
I RECEIVED AN EMAIL today from writer Nancy Edwards talking about me getting mentioned in a newspaper article. She’s a student at my Random Writers Workshop. The irony is she was my college English professor in the early 1990s. I always point this out. At a recent memoir event I blamed my last twenty years of […]
Caroline Leavitt: Why I Write Fiction
WHY DO I WRITE FICTION? Because I’d go mad if I didn’t. Fiction helps me understand the un-understandable. It helps me forgive the unforgivable. I get to be lost in a whole other world and as I learn the language and figure out the terrain, I heal the things that haunt and obsess me. And […]
A Colorful Sound In Chicago
SOMETIMES I DON’T WEAR MY GLASSES or my contacts because I’m sick of seeing all the beautiful people in my city. They make me feel green as I listen to their silky shirts lick their skin and the hollow, yet echoing sound from a woman’s shoes. Five days out of seven I am on this […]
Dealing With The Killing Squads
DURING THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE of 1915, one of the many ways a woman could die at the hands of the killing squads was by the game of swords. The killing squads were bands of ex-convicts, released from prison or recruited by the Ottoman government for the purpose of massacring Armenians. The game of swords involved […]
My First Boyfriend, Leslie
I KNEW LESLIE AS A QUIET BOY who sat in the last row of my fourth grade class at Fammatre Elementary in San Jose, California. The following fall, on the first day of fifth grade, Leslie came to school wearing a pink-flowered sundress. Leslie’s slicked brown hair waved in boy fashion behind her ears, and […]