Growing up in California, our own Michael Bourne didn’t have a full sense of his own privilege until 1981, when a chance encounter with a group of teenagers dressed up as skeletons woke him up to the realities of segregation in America. In a long essay for Orange Coast Review, he goes over the meaning of that incident, complete with meditations on Marin County, his abandoned early novel and his family’s history in Danville, Virginia. Pair with: Michael’s piece for The Millions on Tess Taylor’s The Forage House.
Fences
In Response to Rejections
At the Electric Literature blog, Judson Merrill responds to his many rejection letters: “If you were that excited about my submission, I’m concerned you may have read it with unfair expectations... I’ve reattached my submission under the new title ‘Eight Pages of Tripe’...”
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“The Soul of the Censor”
Recommended reading: Robert Darnton writes for The New York Review of Books blog about the history and politics of censorship.
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Are You Sure?
"Are you sure you need to give me that summer reading list-library flyer-academic camp brochure? Are you sure that I can’t just let my kids get dumber by 1/3rd until they come back here in the fall like we all used to?" Are you sure there isn't anything I can do? Welcome to every teacher's nightmare, courtesy of McSweeney's.
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