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With Dedication: New Poems amid Pandemic

7/9/2020

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Cover for "With Dedication: New Poems." Click on the PDF (at right) to read.
withdedication_book__1_.pdf
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Congratulations to my now published poets(!), participants in the "With Dedication" poetry writing workshop that I taught online across 5 Mondays in May and June. Their collection is a testament to their collective will to write: through pandemic, through protest.

Here is the introduction I wrote for the book:

Dear Reader,
 
Participants in our “With Dedication” workshop met across five weeks to discuss and write poetry that would recognize, celebrate, and elevate significant people in their families, communities, and lineages.
 
We met in an online classroom since public spaces were closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. At a time when social interaction was severely limited, we unmasked in front of our screens, and practiced praising our particular language—and each other.
 
Some of these poems took the form of dedication proposed by the workshop; others followed conduits that beckoned more urgently.
 
Shortly after our second meeting on May 25, Minneapolis police killed George Floyd. Video of the killing ignited protests across the nation and world.
 
Part of poetry’s power is that it can speak to readers of any time or place. Yet all poets write in specific times and places. It feels important to note the larger context of where and when these poems were crafted.
 
Langston Hughes’ “problem world” remains our world; the tools of reading, learning, and dreaming are yet how we “make our world anew.”
 
Our book opens with Ayoka Drake’s “Freedom” breaking the “rools” of spelling. Answering Hughes’ call to realize dreams “unfettered, free,” Drake demonstrates that poets must do the work of dismantling in order to find truth in new language. Each poet of “With Dedication” does this in their own way: making sense through the five senses, forging together a truly original collection.
 
The book closes with Abria Smith’s pair of “delicate copper leaf earrings,” an image that speaks of craft and achievement. Like the poetry herein, what was once “raw / Unimagined” has been “etched” into something tangible, beautiful, and enduring.
 
We hope that you enjoy reading, and that you find within, perhaps, seeds for your own language to grow from.


Each time I teach, I try to offer students the opportunity to make something--often a book--together. While the experience of the classroom or workshop is transient (and necessarily so), a book endures as a collective record and shared achievement. It is a community of pages. Here's a photo of some of the student, neighborhood, hospital, and workshop collections that I'm proud to have helped put together in recent years.
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Support immigrants on st. patrick's day

3/4/2020

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The Irish are among the world's great storytelling cultures, and it's time to tell a better story on St. Patrick's Day.

Especially with parades now cancelled and would-be revelers avoiding crowded bars, let's invest some of our capital to support immigrant communities currently under legal and political attack.

Since 2016, I've made an annual donation on St. Patrick's Day, and I invite you to do the same. Call it celebration by donation. It's the right thing to do, because:

Immigrants make America great.

Here are three organizations in Massachusetts that fight for immigrants rights and a more inclusive society:

  • The Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy (MIRA) Coalition is "the largest coalition in New England promoting the rights and integration of immigrants and refugees. With offices in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, we advance this mission through education and training, leadership development, institutional organizing, strategic communications, policy analysis and advocacy." Click here to donate.
  • The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Massachusetts mission is "to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding." Click here to donate.
  • The American Civil Liberties Union Massachusetts is "a state affiliate of the national ACLU. We defend the principles enshrined in the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, as well as the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights." Click here to donate.

Thank you for reading. If you donate, let me know. I'd like to thank you and tally the total donations (number and amount, which I'll keep anonymous). Leave a comment or email me at aajamde[at]yahoo[dot]com

Sláinte.
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With Nothing to Prove, Serena Plays On

9/7/2019

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In a recent essay published in Harpers, Serena Williams reflected on the 2018 US Open incident when an umpire issued a series of penalties that cost Serena a critical game during the women’s final. She wrote, “I felt defeated and disrespected by a sport that I love—one that I had dedicated my life to and that my family truly changed, not because we were welcomed, but because we wouldn’t stop winning.”

This idea of changing the game through winning reminded me of a moment in Howard Bryant’s book The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron. As Bryant tells the story of the all-time homerun champ, he describes Aaron’s career-long struggle for respect: in the media, in his salary, and as a black athlete in America. Early in his career, Aaron sought to chase Stan Musial’s all-time record for hits. But as he became more socially and politically aware, Aaron recognized that in order to rewrite his own narrative ("Hank" was the sport media's nickname for him, meant to reinforce a false, simpleton image) and make others pay attention to him beyond just as a really good ballplayer, he would need to do something larger, he would need to put his own unavoidable stamp on greatness. Bryant wrote, “If [Aaron] corralled [the all-time home-run record], they would listen to him. They would all have no choice but to pay attention to what he had to say for the rest of his life.” (298)

In a sport that celebrates her excellence while not fully welcoming her presence, perhaps this is what drives Serena.

Venus and Serena aren’t the first champions of color in tennis, but they’re the ones who’ve most remade the game in their image--power, athleticism, intelligence, speed, and complexion--inspiring the next generation of American women, and black women among them.

Still, as the Greatest Tennis Player of All-Time goes after her record tying 24th grand slam title today, most of the country will be too caught up in college football and tomorrow's NFL chatter to notice.

That's too bad.

As the US Women’s National Soccer Team has proven once again, it matters whom we cheer for.

In a nation that continues to struggle to see the humanity in every human being, it matters whom we love.

I, too, wore braces when the sisters--and their megawatt smiles--debuted on the professional tour in theirs. I played doubles on a junior varsity tennis team outside Minneapolis, Minnesota--nary a jock among us--and my first impression of Venus and Serena was of how fun it was to watch them smack the crap out of the ball. I hadn’t watched much tennis on TV, but I wanted to watch them. They were American, my age. They were also goofy, awkward, best friends, and unabashedly themselves. I tracked their ascent up the tour rankings on the back page of my monthly Tennis Magazine. It was clear even then that they could bring a sea change to the sport--its power, its tactics, its historic lines.

Yet since she and her sister arrived on the professional tour--and even before--their presence in the sport was questioned, scrutinized, notable for how they were different, their success too often undermined or explained away. When they won, it was expected because they were bigger and stronger. When they faced each other, they were derided for not competing hard enough. When they pursued other professional interests, they were chided as disrespectful to the game for not fulfilling their talent. They were bumped, booed, and baited all along the way.

I'm 37 now, married with a baby, and I can't name any other athletes whom I've traversed most of my life cheering, still at the pinnacle of their sport.

Though she shows no signs of slowing, there may not be many more opportunities to watch the G.O.A.T. in her dominance.

Have you stopped to watch her yet? Have you stopped and said, Wow?

Maybe it matters that you do.

There's always a way to critique someone who challenges your idea of champion--they seem boastful, push fashion boundaries, act out their frustrations on court... Actually, those easily apply to Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic respectively. But we don't define the men by these faults; we brush them aside and instead revel in their game, their achievements, their contrasting characters.

I, too, see the ways Serena doesn't conform--isn't always easy to watch or to like--but I brush them aside. It's easy, actually. I go back again and again to that feeling, the joy of watching her play.

If we can't love Serena, what she has done and is doing, how are we going to love the next young woman or girl who comes along? Say, Alexis Olympia, Serena's daughter. What more will she have to prove?

Maybe Serena is staying in the game for her daughter. Or maybe she's still playing for us, because we need the chance to love more generously and expansively than we have so far.

The U.S. Open final is today at 4pm EST on ESPN.

There is still time.
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Mapping America: July 4th in the Time of Trump

7/3/2019

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I remember the first time I saw a map of the world flipped to show a perspective from the southern hemisphere. The shapes were familiar yet the view was disorienting. The world was upside down.

I’ve been thinking about maps ahead of July 4th. Despite having many natives names, the American continents were stamped with the moniker of an Italian mapmaker, Amerigo Vespucci. 

Just as in Vespucci’s time humanity came to understand that the Earth was round, you and I have had to learn that there are infinite perspectives on our globe. And that the map we studied in textbooks or often see replicated around us--perhaps the one that centers us, our perspective, enlarging us--presents just one, flattened viewpoint.

In Vespucci’s time, people were afraid to travel beyond the known map, because there were sea monsters way out or one long cliff into oblivion. Today, it seems, we’re subject to the same fears. 

But seeing the world through new eyes, while disorienting, won’t make you disappear. Vespucci didn’t sail over a cliff, and you won’t either. The truth is that seeing another’s viewpoint illuminates your own. 

In his poem “Song of the Open Road,” Walt Whitman claimed that encountering others and learning about their lives expanded the map of his own humanity. He wrote, “I am larger, better than I thought, / I did not know I held such goodness.”

The lateness of America is our ongoing failure to incorporate the diversity of our peoples into the mapmaking of our nation. The only greatness of America has been in our potential to do so. Even as one bloc of voters seeks to reduce this country to a Mercator Projection of mean distortion,  that potential--though dimmed--endures. 

I’m finding it hard to map my own hope in the United States right now. Independence Day? Who can claim independence in a nation where children are locked in concentration camps along the border, where racists wield power from the White House to the court house, where women are stripped of autonomy over their own bodies, where LGBTQ people are told that prejudiced religious “beliefs” have rights that trump their own, where science is disbelieved, where the free press is attacked, where guns infiltrate our schools and houses of worship, where the rich get richer, where military spending dwarfs all else, and where the so-called president is hateful, dishonest, and cruel.

Yet this fight--this fight that the American reality might live up to its American ideals--has always been there, beckoning our collective compass. The luminous James Baldwin wrote that “American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.” 

Writers like Whitman and Baldwin speak to us through the pains of history, helping us navigate our American struggle today: to know ourselves, know each other, keep striving.

Indeed, contemporary authors and artists are doing this work, too: inviting us into essential understandings of racial, gender, and cultural identities. The truth is that we have never had so many mapmakers at work in this country, and the number of platforms through which they can create--and we can access--their maps is unprecedented, too. If we can just set out, if we're willing to journey.

I am grateful each time writers, artists, friends, and neighbors show me the world through their eyes. They are my mapmakers, and they give me hope. 

The political landscape is daunting, yet the frontier of discovery still exists in each of us, our own personal America that synthesizes and empathizes across the boundaries of individual experience. 
​

Our national mythology would have us believe that the individual can travel this road to America alone, but the truth is that we only ever could get there together.
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On Venezuela

1/31/2019

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When I lived in Caracas in 2006, I would walk from the residential Parque Central towers along the Avenida Urdaneta to get to my job teaching English. Avenida Urdaneta was always crowded with commuters and buhoneros who sold everything from lampshades to lingerie, while food carts offered hot dogs topped with fried eggs and potato chips.

Every few blocks, there was a newsstand where readers had a choice between Chavista papers or Opposition rags. Even the country’s largest newspapers fought to uphold objectivity under the polarizing leadership of Hugo Chavez--up for reelection that year.

Across seven months in Caracas, I interacted with all types. I taught English at night to adults. I got a part-time server position. I nannied for a family who lived in Chula Vista. I volunteered with a group of hospital clowns. I tagged along with Venezuelan friends to nearby beaches and Leones home games at the baseball stadium. I played futbolito in Parque Los Caobos and hiked the Avila on weekends.

In all this time living and working in Venezuela, I encountered advocates for both political sides equally. I listened as each argued their case for or against Chavez.

While Venezuelans could be eloquent in addressing me, I rarely heard dialogue or acknowledgement across the divide. Each person seemed to be telling me that there was one story to be told, the truth about their country. With the Venezuelan media split, anyone could subscribe to the news that affirmed their perspective.

Chavez was a powerful storyteller. He offered a narrative that promised an historic role for Venezuela: fulfilling Simon Bolivar’s dream of a united Latin America and opposing the interventionist U.S. imperialists. Chavez espoused a kind of destiny for his people with roots in the past and offering a future he called 21st Century Socialism--one that could raise all boats on the nation’s oil wealth. What’s more, and importantly, Chavez looked and sounded criollo criollo. Masses of Venezuelans looked at him and saw themselves.

On the other side, the Opposition--then led by Manuel Rosales--told a story of a nation beset by bureaucratic corruption, urban insecurity, dire economic forecast, and the dangerous implications of Chavez’ new friendships with the leaders of Iran and North Korea.

Chavez’ story won him reelection. While a record number of Venezuelans turned out to vote for the Opposition in 2006, a kind of blue and yellow wave, even more red hat wearing Venezuelans showed up to reelect Chavez.

Though the Opposition’s story held important truths, it seemed that those who voted for Chavez preferred the truths contained in his version.

Buoyed by oil, Chavez' administration built housing and schools, opened missions to assist poor communities across the country, recruited medical and university exchanges with Cuba, all sustaining the faith of his base.

But the price of oil dropped, the Opposition grew, and in 2013, Chavez died.
​
Chavez’ successor, Nicolas Maduro, has tried to carry forward Chavez’ legacy, but the seeds of 21st Century Socialism haven’t borne fruit. The country’s plunge into poverty is well documented. Millions of Venezuelans have fled their homeland, a nation rich in natural and cultural resources.

Maduro maneuvered to consolidate power by rewriting law, imprisoning political opponents, censoring the media, deploying armed troops to quell protests. All while using the U.S. as a foil to keep his followers riled up.

Maduro turned Chavez’ story from beacon to bludgeon, stoking fear and a divisive patriotism, while negating the existence of any other narrative. Before he earned the moniker "usurper" (of the presidency), he usurped the national story.

When Juan Guaidó swore himself in as interim president last week and was recognized internationally including by the U.S., Venezuela‘s Opposition reclaimed its side of the national narrative.

But what is Guaidó’s story? And how much authorship will the international community endeavor to take from the Venezuelan people who deserve to write their own way forward?

Three years ago, the U.S. presidential election gave me the feeling that we were living in Venezuela in 2006: a divided populace further polarized by a divided media. With social media, the fracturing has accelerated.

Consider the confrontational video taken recently on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. On The Daily podcast, they described it as a political rorschach: you see what you’re primed to see.

So we must invest in and protect the work of journalists who tell our national narratives with nuance and complexity. We also need leaders at both national and local levels who can author a more powerful, cohesive American narrative than the current White House occupant offers. And we must foster a culture of more empathic storytelling.

In my life, I’ve found this culture most consistently in literature, which Ezra Pound called “news that stays news.”

As I followed news of Venezuela’s political and economic descent from Boston, I reached out to Venezuelan poet Mariela Cordero whose poem “Cuerpo Público” gives an intimate, personal voice to the human fallout in Maduro’s Venezuela, one in which the daily reality seems ruled by “las jaurías.”

We need survivable spaces, like poetry or stories, in which to feel the pain of injustice: from Venezuelans in street protest to American government workers enduring the shutdown. Change begins in empathy.

Cordero's poem also pens its own solace, a meagerest place in which to harbor hope. In the last lines, Cordero writes:

Yo me acurruco / y espero que el amanecer / nos asombre con la evidencia / de que ambos, / este cuerpo donde habito y yo / sobrevivimos / a la larga noche / de las jaurías.

I curl into myself / and hope that morning / astonishes us with proof / that both / this body I inhabit and I /—survive—/ the long night / of the pack.

Today, I’m thinking about the Venezuelan people, hoping that their hope can endure. And that hope is a story we can all author going forward.
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New piece: "Are You My Uber?" on McSweeney's Internet Tendency

6/29/2016

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... Check out my new piece "Are You My Uber?" now posted on McSweeney's Internet Tendency (thanks McSweeney's for this awesome cover image!).
Here is the link to read "Are You My Uber?" on McSweeney's site.
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What We Give Makes a Life

7/20/2015

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On New Year's Day 2005, the two tennis courts at Raymond Rec in the Georgia Ave/Petworth neighborhood of Washington D.C. were littered with glass, encroached by brush, cracked, and missing a net. Peron, a neighbor, saw Rachel and I picking up pieces of glass, and he offered us a broom. Together, the three of us planned free Monday night tennis lessons, open to all the neighborhood kids, which Rachel and I led throughout that spring and summer.
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On July 17th, 2005, the courts at Raymond Rec celebrated PLAY TENNIS DAY. Over the course of one Sunday, volunteers built and installed a tennis wall, painted a community mural, offered free lessons, provided t-shirts, and lunch, and enjoyed live matches between Howard University men's and women's tennis teams. The left panel on the tennis wall reads: "From what we get, we can make a living. What we give, however, makes a life." ~Arthur Ashe

New Year's Day 2005 in Washington D.C. was unseasonably warm, so Rachel Sandler (Iowan) and I (Minnesotan) decided to go out and play tennis. We were living in the Columbia Heights neighborhood just before the arrival of the Super Giant grocery store (and the sweeping transformations that would follow) and the closest tennis courts to us were a short walk away behind Raymond Elementary School. When we arrived, we saw the two courts were littered with glass. There were holes in the fences and only one net. We debated looking for another court, but instead started picking up the glass. Soon, Peron Williams, a neighbor, came over to offer us a push broom, and when we had cleared one court, we started to play. Peron stuck around to watch. 

Afterward, Peron told us that the tennis courts had once thrived--with neighbors lining up to play--but that in recent years, the courts had been neglected, taken over by rough characters and drugs. Peron was glad to see the courts used for tennis again.

Rachel and I were fellows in AVODAH at the time: a social justice service corps dedicated to anti-poverty work and the exploration of "intentional community": living consciously and connectedly with others. We were both lifelong tennis players and had taught tennis in other settings. I suggested to Peron that we offer free tennis lessons to the neighborhood kids, giving them the chance to learn a new sport with the hopes of them taking back the court. Peron, who happened to be president of the local ANC, loved the idea and offered his support. 
Starting in spring and throughout the summer, Rachel and I offered free Monday night tennis lessons to anyone who showed up. And they did show up: around 20 kids each week, ranging from six to fourteen years old. With so many kids on just two courts, the lessons were chaotic--but so what. We taught them forehands and volleys, played eye-hand coordination games and shouted encouragement. Most important, the kids were out having fun together on their home courts.

And how to make it stick? How to give kids more opportunities to play and develop their skills? How to celebrate the courts' renewal? How to draw attention to the need for new nets, a repaired fence, and repaved courts? How to hand over the tools of our play and sustain tennis at Raymond Rec even after our Monday night lessons ended?


Play Tennis Day began as an answer to these questions.

My fellowship placement that year was with the Behrend Builders Shelter Repair program, which was run out of the Community Service Center at the DC JCC. Behrend Builders helped me see the value of partnerships and community investment for creating sustainable change. Play Tennis Day's catalyst partnership happened when Peron Williams lent Rachel and I the broom. Next, Denise Skinner and the Washington Tennis Association recognized our common work and came on-board. As did Shaw District's Tennis at Shiloh Chuch Program. Peron brought the ANC, which reached out to then-City Councillor (and future DC Mayor) Adrian Fenty. We secured grants from Coca Cola and Clif Bar. Finally, the Howard University tennis teams agreed to join in. The week before Play Tennis Day, D.C. Parks and Recreation took action to repave the courts, mend the fences, and hang new nets. The stage was set for a celebration.

On the swelteringly hot morning of Sunday, July 17th, 2005, a dozen volunteers built a tennis wall under guidance from Behrend's skilled volunteers Kenton Campbell and Richard Feldman. By noon, a mural team made up of neighbors (including some walk-ups) and volunteers began painting a community mural on the wall led by artist Carrie Madigan (whom we found via Craigslist). At the same time, Denise Skinner and the Washington Tennis Association teamed with the Tennis at Shiloh Program to engage the neighborhood kids in tennis games and giveaways, competitions and free barbecue. There was music, ice cream, and fun for all who came together--many lives making an unlikely intersection through the work and play of Play Tennis Day. When the mural was complete, Peron, Rachel, and I shared our story and dedicated the wall. To cap the day, the Howard University men's and women's tennis teams played exhibition matches to inspire the kids to keep playing.
On the tennis wall, we painted this quote from American tennis great and humanitarian Arthur Ashe: "From what we get, we can make a living. What we give, however, makes a life."
That was ten years ago this weekend. About a month after Play Tennis Day, my fellowship with AVODAH ended, and I moved out of Columbia Heights, back to my parents' house in Minnesota where I waited tables, saved money, and planned for an uncommon journey through Latin America. The spirit of those travels was in many ways forged and inspired at the Raymond Recreation tennis courts: belief in Arthur Ashe's philosophy that what we give makes a life, and that sharing something you love--such as tennis--can help cross barriers of language, race, or background that might otherwise divide us. In the summer of 2005, we put up a functional, beautiful wall that stood for others we had torn down in the process.

In the years since, I sometimes wondered if I left the project too soon--not at its end, but at its very beginning. What if we had continued the lessons another year or more? What if we had set our sights on a more distant goal?

After I moved away, friends in D.C. would occasionally send me pictures of the tennis wall. Each one reminded me of what we had accomplished. But I also watched graffiti creep across the wall's surface, marring its images. This past winter, I visited D.C. and saw that the entire park at Raymond Recreation had been renovated, including a new artificial turf soccer field and a state-of-the-art playground. The space looked clean and inviting; so changed from when Rachel and I first visited. Also changed: instead of two tennis courts, there was only one. And the tennis wall was gone. 

I asked around, but no one at the park that day knew if or how the wall had been discarded (I still hope to find out), nor did they remember how Raymond Rec looked before the renovation.  So I lingered awhile, listening outside and in, then continued with my day. Places change. People move and move on. You know. You've wondered, too: what endures?

This weekend, I have been remembering Play Tennis Day and all the individuals who came together to support tennis and community at Raymond Rec. I remember each of them, how gladly they played and gave, how full our time together felt. I still believe that partnerships, vision, and person-to-person generosity are what make the biggest difference in our communities and lives. 

Ten years ago, after we finished painting, we invited all of the kids present that day, many of whom had played at our Monday night tennis lessons over the previous months, to paint their hands and make a trail of handprints across the bottom of the mural. 

I wonder if any of those kids still play tennis. I wonder if they remember how it felt to press their wet, paint-covered hands against that plywood wall.



(click below to read PDFs of articles published in a local NW D.C. newspaper about our free tennis lessons at Raymond Rec and about Play Tennis Day)
article about Play Tennis Day
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article about tennis lessons
File Size: 1041 kb
File Type: pdf
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Know thy self (Publishing)

3/18/2015

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Gabby Wallace sat at one of my tables back in 2010 when I was a server at a Latin American restaurant in Brookline Village. We got to talking about travel and language, and she bought a copy of Wonder/Wander. 

Today, Gabby is a language teacher and entrepreneur based in Tokyo. She recently interviewed me for her Laptop Language Teacher blog and we continued our conversation started back in Brookline years ago.

This is one of the pleasures of publishing: finding common ground and connection with people whom you might not otherwise meet, being part of a conversation that compels you and is bigger than you.

Self-publishing is not equal to being selected by an established publisher in many peoples' eyes, even as the line between them becomes increasingly thin. As a writer, it's worth considering: what will satisfaction look like when your writing is complete? 

During the creative stage, you control the quality of your writing, as well as the time and effort you put into the work. Self-publishing takes your control one step further, ensuring that your work is able to be read. Yes, I wanted the publisher's seal of approval for Wonder/Wander (I sent it as an unsolicited manuscript to Graywolf, Coffee House Press, and Milkweed Editions in 2009). But deeper than that, I wanted to share my experience and myself through what I had written. I wanted to make my book.

Publishing brought satisfaction in quiet, intimate ways: when I held my book in my hands for the first time; when I gave copies to my family and closest friends. And this: meeting like-spirits, like Gabby, who find the book and share their stories; who join me in the conversations, which illuminate our larger work.
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Harvard Interview: Writing at Children's Hospital

1/24/2015

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I met Julia Moss a couple of years ago at Boston Children's Hospital where she--as a local high school student--volunteered with our Creative Arts Program by sharing her cartooning skills with patients. Now she's a freshman at Harvard and co-founder of the Harvard College Medical Humanities Forum (HCMHF), designed to create opportunities for students to discuss and write about the intersections between medicine and the arts/humanities.

Julia interviewed me about my work as Writer in Residence in the Creative Arts Program at Boston Children's Hospital and the edited transcript is now posted on the HCMHF blog (MedHum.tumblr.com). Read the interview here (or click "read more" below).

Thanks, Julia, for the great work you do: lending company and levity to the patients at Children's Hospital, and bringing awareness to the vital overlap between medicine and the arts.

Read More
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Throwback Thursday

12/11/2014

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Back in 2009, I promoted Wonder/Wander on local cable-access shows: "Tu Opinion Cuenta" (with William Pena), "The Callaloo Express" (with Lynnette Laveau Save), and "El Show de Fernandito" (with Fernando Bossa). Below is the interview from "El Show de Fernandito" (7min 15sec; English and Spanish).
Each appearance was fun and forced me to find the language--in both languages--for talking about the book, the journey, and the reasons for both. At that time, I was waiting tables at Orinoco Kitchen in Brookline Village where we had a small display of Wonder/Wander books for sale. I rarely pushed them, but customers would browse and from time-to-time someone came to dine who was from Venezuela or had traveled Central America or had a son interested in Spanish language or who just identified with the spirit of the work and they would buy a copy from me, their waiter. I enjoyed that serendipitous sales approach. I never expected Wonder/Wander to climb the sales charts or be thrust on people whom it didn't interest. Instead, I think books are as diverse as people, and we need to find the ones that resonate with and inside of us. Even as I use social media as a promotions tool, I believe that books find their readers and readers find their books through much subtler channels: the same ones that connect us to friends or lovers.
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    Welcome to The Park.

    The Park is a creative play space (aka blog).

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