This joyful moving-beyond-flags state is one we aim for in our family too, though we carry our multiple backgrounds with us. My husband's and my contrasting national heritages, in particular, require attention and adjustments: I ask him to eat oatmeal or breakfast cereal rather than rice on weekend mornings, American-style. He asks me to avoid writing people's names in red ink and whistling after dark, respecting two Japanese etiquette norms. More labor-intensive and sensitive is our ongoing negotiation of how to treat each other as husband and wife, having grown up in two very different paradigms for gender and marriage.
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Our editors and columnists share their recent forays into essays, Burma, the afterlife, migration, and Chinese poetry below. Download the list to find it fast at your local bookstore or library.
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When Nina Sankovitch lost her older sister Anne-Marie to cancer, her life went into a tailspin. Three years later, Sankovitch's grief and pain were as acute as ever. That's when she turned to books. She committed to reading a book a day for a year, hoping to find the solace and answers she was looking for through the written word. Sankovitch recounts her experience in the recently published Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading. Literary Mama Profiles Editor Lisa Moskowitz Sadikman interviewed Sankovitch about how she managed to read a book a day, how reading informed her motherhood and the connective power of books.
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Every day for one year, Nina Sankovitch read an entire book and posted a review on her website -- all while raising four boys. As a mother of just two children, a mother who struggled to find time to read this one book, I was curious to know how Sankovitch did it. Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading tells her story.
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In previous centuries, life moved at a walking pace. Social roles were assigned by birth or by ritual ties to earth and tribe. Today, social roles include many choices, and seemingly few constraints. Today, our lives move faster than the speed of a car, and driving is only one of many dangers a child will face. So, while Will learns to drive, I am learning to release him into the world, a difficult place where he will need to create his own niche.
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And instantly I want to speak to your mother. To tell her how peaceful you look, and how your face seems dream-like and content, as though you'd known you'd done the right thing. Just as suddenly I want to grab you and shake you and scream at you for what you'd just done to her.
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My children are almost
my age.
When I fly
they believe I am a bird. ...
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