"I made up for them
by handing over
all the private parts of me
there was no secret I didn't tell him
there was no moment I didn't share
we didn't grow up, we grew in
like ivy
wrapping
molding eachother like perfect yings and yangs
we kissed with mouths open
breathing his exhale into my inhale,
we could have survived under water
or outerspace
living only off the breath we traded
we spelled love
G-I-V-E"
Visiting Nigeria
BY Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
At first we goggled the
sprawling savannas; flat, vast expanses bearing
heads of grain, yellowish-brown in the scorching sun,
that nodded – swayed in the evenings – to the
magical drums of the northern winds
Then – south-bound - the joyous tears
of wise and wrinkled ancestors
trickled, and then poured down
to herald the resurrection of the yams
Then the lush wealth of green
surrounded us and we saw
on the stern-faced gods
carefully carved of living wood
a smile of benevolence
Then the brown, bare earth
turned red
with earthworm paths, with spicy dew
and our creased feet
like charred, parched brown paper
soaked the richness of re-birth
Then the Niger, still and silent
- housing its mermaids, its watery gods -
bore our canoe, zig-zag lines etched in its weather-beat body
in spiritual and dominant acquiescence
And at last
while the spirits roamed the hills
their piercing singing in the wind
(that our guards said were horny, mating crickets)
carrying the folklore of the wise tortoise
and feathers slipped off of humming birds,
our souls danced
Like sometimes it was best when
Girls were girls and boys were boys.
Like back when freeze tag was a mating dance.
Like back when "Do Over" meant you got another chance.
Like back when anxiety was worrying if Wonder Woman would make it out alive.
Like back when freedom was sliding backwards on a slide.
Like back when success was jumping off a swing and
Landing on your feet, then
Doing it all over again.
Like new shoes made you run faster.
Like getting Ms. Gross again for math was a disaster.
Like failure was a word we hadn't even learned to spell yet.
Like promises were sealed and kept with pinky bets.
Like a challenge was a double dare.
Like ugly was a cock-eyed stare.
And you liked it...
More
National Day of Listening promotes oral history
BY Travis Loller, Associated Press Writer
NASHVILLE — A national oral history project is trying to start a new tradition for Black Friday. Instead of hunting for bargains, StoryCorps suggests families sit down together and talk about their lives on a National Day of Listening.
Amanda Rigell, a 30-year-old middle school teacher from Johnson City, Tenn., interviewed her grandmother, who was 89 at the time, for the first National Day of Listening last year.
"She was reluctant at first," Rigell said. "She doesn't really talk about herself." But then she talked for more than two and a half hours.
"She talked about her early education. She went to a tiny little school, I think there was only one other person there for a while. And she talked about drinking fresh milk from a cow. I guess that shouldn't have surprised me, but it did," Rigell said.
StoryCorps is a nonprofit project that seeks to preserve the stories of ordinary people. Rigell first learned about it when she heard some of those stories broadcast on public radio during her morning commute. She had already interviewed two people at StoryCorps recording booths when she and her father decided to interview her grandmother at home.
"I'm really glad we did it last year because her health has been declining," she said. "There was a while last month when she couldn't speak."
Rigell said her grandmother, who lives in Campbell County near the Kentucky border, was around for all the "big events" of her childhood. Some of her fondest memories of her grandmother involve home cooked meals and "amazing" buttermilk biscuits. But there were a lot of things Rigell didn't know about her.
Rigell recorded the interview on her computer and plans to give copies as Christmas presents.
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Michelle Obama Helps Sesame Street Mark the Big 4-0
By Stephen M. Silverman
Oscar the Grouch had better behave – and keep his political opinions to himself.
On Tuesday, to mark the 40th anniversary of the groundbreaking children's program Sesame Street, some very special guests pay a visit, including First Lady Michelle Obama. According to previews circulating the Net, she meets Big Bird – who observes that the two of them are tall.
Mrs. Obama also delivers a message that may not entirely sit well with Cookie Monster. Appearing with three kids and the show's fuzzy, red resident Elmo, she encourages them to plant seeds in the ground, water them and then expect them to sprout tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce and carrots.
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"What this demonstrates, I think, is how impressionable and vulnerable we are in the face of a story, particularly as children. Because all I had read were books in which characters were foreign, I had become convinced that books, by their very nature, had to have foreigners in them and had to be about things with which I could not personally identify. Now, things changed when I discovered African books...Because of writers like Chinua Achebe... I went through a mental shift in my perception of literature. I realized that people like me - girls with skin the color of chocolate, whose kinky hair could not form pony tails, could also exist in literature."
Wanna know more about Chimamanda? Check out her Wiki.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (born September 15, 1977) is an acclaimed Nigerian writer. She comes from Abba in Anambra State, southeast Nigeria. Her family is of Igbo descent.[1]
She was born in the town of Enugu but grew up in the university town of Nsukka in south-eastern Nigeria, where the University of Nigeria is situated. While she was growing up, her father was a professor of statistics at the University, and her mother was also employed there as the university registrar. At the age of 19, she left Nigeria and moved to the United States.
Her first novel, Purple Hibiscus, was published in 2003 and won the Best First Book award in the 2005 Commonwealth Writers' Prize.
Her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, named after the flag of the short-lived Biafran nation, is set before and during the Biafran War. It was published by Knopf/Anchor in 2006 and was awarded the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction.[4]
Her third book is a collection of short stories titled The Thing Around Your Neck and was published in April 2009 by Fourth Estate in the UK and Knopf in the US.
There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.
Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.
Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.
