Overcoming Speechlessness is a short book on poet and novelist Alice Walker’s travels to Rwanda, Congo, and Palestine where she bears witness and attends to heartbreaking tales of atrocity, devastation, and cruelty. Yet, she is…
I’ve read it every day of my life since I was thirteen. It is, among the man-made artifacts, my primary source of knowledge of the stuff of this world and the next. Its limitless archive…
I was sitting outside at RISE with a young Irish-Jewish American friend who asked me, when I showed her a particular chapter in Dear Layla Welcome to Palestine, “Who is Abbie Hoffman?” It was a pleasure…
One of the most powerful responses To my novel Dear Layla Welcome to Palestine Was yours I sent you a draft You stopped reading After fifty pages It was the chapter in which the Israeli…
Dear Shimmelstoy After our conversation yesterday afternoon I wrote the following lines Thanks for your encouragement If you want to pass it on To some of your students Go right ahead Bella Levenshteyn He…
A skeptical friend asked why I like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon so much… so the following, off the top of my head, even though I recognize de gustibus non est disputandum… Why is it the best (for…
For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number…
In one of Tolstoy’s parables, a peasant is plowing a field. The narrator asks the old man what he would do if he knew that Death was coming to take him away within the hour….
What Does Our Food Eat? – Eggs, Chickens, and Food Systems in Pastocalle, Ecuador This summer Melissa Chapnick spent six weeks living and working in Pastocalle, Ecuador. Working in conjunction with Dr. Lora Iannotti of…