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Posted on July 19, 2017 2 Comments
Yo vengo de todas partes, Y hacia todas partes voy: Arte soy entre las artes, En los montes, monte soy.* –“Versos Sencillos” (José Martí) I. Landing […]
Posted on April 30, 2017 6 Comments
“I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it…My soul has grown deep like the rivers.” — Langston Hughes This promises to be a long post. I’ve tried hard to condense it, but this experience is resistant to brevity. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t attempt to encapsulate a trip of this length or magnitude in […]
Posted on July 10, 2016 2 Comments
Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart has one of the most powerful endings in literature. In this novel which chronicles the dramatic rise and ultimate downfall of Okonkwo, a black Ibo clansman, the story is literally and figuratively taken over in its final chapter by the District Commissioner, an unnamed, incredibly minor white character, who […]
Posted on July 7, 2016 Leave a Comment
Deye mon gen mon (Beyond the mountains, there are more mountains.) — Hatian proverb I now know that I needed to come back because my childhood memories of Haiti never included mountains. As a literature teacher, I make it a point to emphasize the importance of context in a piece of writing–historical, cultural, and political, […]
Posted on July 1, 2016 Leave a Comment
We spent most of Tuesday and Wednesday, our first two days, reuniting with friends and family who had either never left Haiti, or who had chosen to return out of love, for work, or both. Among the former group, were my aunt, and three of my mother’s cousins, the aforementioned pressers of uniform pleats, […]
Posted on August 1, 2015 Leave a Comment
“When you do dance, I wish you A wave o’ th’ sea, that you might ever do Nothing but that.” The Winter’s Tale (IV, iv, 159-161) Each and every Shakespeare’s Globe performance ends with a jig. That’s right, everybody dances. This custom cuts across genres as the star-crossed lovers, deposed monarchs, and bloody corpses we […]
Posted on July 21, 2015 2 Comments
The language I have learn’d these forty years, My native English, now I must forego: And now my tongue’s use is to me no more Than an unstringed viol or a harp, Or like a cunning instrument cased up, Or, being open, put into his hand. That knows no touch to tune the harmony: Within […]
Posted on July 19, 2015 Leave a Comment
Today I wisely refrained from making definite plans. Rest has been at a premium during this first hectic week, and most of us have been feeling sleep-deprived. So after my morning porridge (this term seems to be preferable to oatmeal), I grabbed my laundry and headed for the basement. The rest of the day I […]
Posted on July 19, 2015 2 Comments
We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. –T.S. Eliot This has been an incredibly transformative experience so far, but it felt particularly so on Thursday. The morning began with our first movement session with […]
Posted on July 14, 2015 2 Comments
The title of this post is a shameless rip-off of one of the techniques we learned on the first day of TSTP, but I think it speaks to the day as a whole, so, with apologies to Colin Hurley whom you’ll meet later in this post, I’m going to misappropriate liberally here, starting with breakfast: […]
Learner Sojourner 