Book recommendation: Reading with Patrick by Michelle Kuo.
From a thumbnail New Yorker review:
“The author, a Harvard-educated child of Taiwanese immigrants, volunteered for Teach for America in a small town in the Arkansas Delta. In this memoir, she recounts arriving determined to empower her students through the study of black American literature and civil-rights politics. Sobered by the challenges she encounters, she leaves the program at the end of her commitment, only to return, guilt-stricken, when a former student, Patrick, is arrested for murder. As he awaits trial, the two resume their lessons”…
On another note, I’ve been out in a cabin in Temecula since Tuesday, in silence and solitude.
Yesterday I saw an acorn woodpecker on the kindling pile. His head, a splash of blood-red, was like a longed-for love letter.
"She don't play"– marvelous. Also this: "Let's invite everyone to, or back to, the table."
Marianne, I loved that, too–"She don't play"…everyone can spot a phony and everyone respects the person whose house is built on solid rock…