Corrigan’s Editorial Note: Gabriela M. Gonzalez took my African American Literature course in the spring of 2020, the semester interrupted by the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. I so appreciated her final reflection about the course and what she learned that I wanted to share. Reading African American literature can be both gruesome and inspiring. […]
We read Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions by Valeria Luiselli in my World Literature course in the spring of 2019. This piercing little book narrates her experience volunteering to translate for lawyers who are volunteering to help process asylum applications for child refugees from Central America who have arrived unaccompanied in […]
When the scholar James Chase Sanchez recently wrote on social media, “White supremacy will destroy us,” a white man I will call Chad responded with a well-intended paragraph. His comment is so dense with common misunderstandings of white supremacy that I find it instructive to unpack line by line. The full comment reads: Nah…theres way […]
Corrigan’s Editorial Note: Tenielle Mounts-Williams wrote this essay in my English Composition I course at Southeastern University in spring 2019. I found her writing moving, her message pressing, and her drawing striking. I am delighted to share her work with you. Don’t Touch, I’m Not Yours Imagine me washing my hair to start the day […]
In a July newsletter just posted to his website, Dr. James Dobson, one of the leading evangelical Christian voices in the United States, narrates his visit to one of the immigrant detention centers along the southern border, where the US Customs and Border Protection holds refugees who have fled from Central America and elsewhere to […]
Let us consider two scenarios, both of which begin the same way: Emily has worked for Soap, Inc. for seven years. She has very few coworkers of color. All of her bosses are white. Every once in a while an overtly racist incident will happen—like when someone pitched a commercial of a black woman washing […]
In the video below, I sit down with David Mura—teacher of creative writing and author of at least ten books of poetry, fiction, memoir, and craft criticism—to discuss his new book: A Stranger’s Journey: Race, Identity, and Narrative Craft in Writing. In both the book and our conversation, Mura speaks with insight, clarity, and grace on: […]
In the video below, I chat with Patricia Roberts-Miller, PhD, about her recent book Demagoguery and Democracy. Although as a scholar of rhetoric or specifically “of train wrecks in public deliberation,” Roberts-Miller has written a number of academic tomes (and in fact has a scholarly version of this one forthcoming), she wrote this as a little […]
Around the age of twelve, Frederick Douglass was sold from a plantation in the countryside to a family in the city of Baltimore. His new mistress set out to teach him to read, and got through the alphabet, until her husband made her stop. “[I]f you teach that nigger . . . how to read,” […]
Corrigan’s Editorial Note: Emilee Rosell took her very first (English Composition II) and very last (World Literature) college classes with me as her professor. She’s now graduated with a BA in English. In this reflection essay, she looks back on what she learned in that last class, and throughout college. I cannot say how inspired and encouraged I […]
“ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.” —James Baldwin #Racism – When your society divides people into “races” based on arbitrary factors like skin color or ancestry and ascribes different worth to the different groups #Prejudice – When you have negative thoughts or feelings toward people of another race or ethnicity […]
Corrigan’s Editorial Note: In U.S. Literature in Spring 2015, Raeanne Watkins created the following images in response to John Okada’s No-No Boy and John Steinbeck’s The Pearl. Okada describes experiences of Japanese Americans after the WWII internment, while Steinbeck offers a parable, set in Mexico, about poverty and wealth. I find Ms. Watkins’ images striking on their […]
Many people do not realize that Jesus was quoting directly from the Book of Leviticus when he said to love one’s neighbors as oneself. This context lends an important layer of meaning to his words. Often his saying is reduced to an encouragement to “be nice” to others. While not a bad admonish as far as it goes, that interpretation […]
