Tayari's Blog: December 2005
December 31, 2005
2006 is the Year of the Reader
Okay, a couple of days I posted my writing resolutions, but I need a reading resolution,too. If you keep up with the blog, you know that I read a LOT, but that's not good enough. I think that writiers need to be directed in their reading. It's kind of like food, you can't just eat whatever you want to eat, you have to have a plan. You have to think about nutrition as well as flavor. So on that note, I am trying to come up with a reading plan for the new year.
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Category:
The Writing Life
December 29, 2005
MLA-- Where Are The Jobs
I'm getting worried about the state of things. I am here at the MLA Convention. For those of you who are not in the academic loop, this is a large conference where people who work in English Departments at colleges and universitites gather. What has got me worried is that this conference is also the place where schools interview candidates for teaching jobs.
Posted at 09:02 AM | Comments (0)
Category:
The Writing Life
December 28, 2005
2006 IS THE YEAR OF THE WRITER
The new year is upon us and it is time to start thinking about what I want to accomplish in the new year. Of course, I have made some personal resolutions in an attempt to find some inner peace or whatever. But it's also time to make some plans in terms of my reading and writing life.
The key, I think, to keeping up with resolutions is to try and be realistic. Don't say that you'll get up at three a.m. and write for two hours before heading to work. You can't possibly keep it up. Instead, just vow to get up at four a.m., one weekday per week, and that you will get up every Saturday and write on that day, too. For really busy people, you have to accept that you can't write as often as someone who has fewer responsibilities. So, you get the idea. Here are my plans:
Posted at 08:19 AM | Comments (3)
Category:
The Writing Life
December 26, 2005
On The Other Side
If you are reading this blog, give yourself a big hug. You've survived the holidays. Shall we make a toast? There are 364 days before we have to do it again.
I didn't receive any books this Christmas? Did you? But on the good side, I didn't end up hiding under my bed either. I'll be up and blogging again in a couple of days. I am going to the MLA conference in DC. Lit Nerd Heaven.
Posted at 02:13 PM | Comments (2)
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December 23, 2005
Yield Not To Temptation
There is an incredible temptation to use one's blog as a site for therapy. This is especially true this time of year. What a relief it would be to spell out my issues in html and hope that readers would write encouraging things in the comments section. The lure is ever greater than the lure of the german chocolate cake I know my mother will have baked by the time I arrive in Atlanta, approximately sixteen hours, twelve minutes, and four seconds from now.
But I will spare you the drama of my internecine family politics. Instead, I will ask, beseech, even BEG you, dear readers, to kindly suggest reading material that I can enjoy while I am holed up in my childhood room, hiding under the bed.
Posted at 07:12 PM | Comments (8)
Category:
The Writing Life
December 21, 2005
My Undergraduates Rock
So sorry about the paucity of postings. My life has gotten pretty hectic as I am scrambling to get out of town. (DC here I come!) My big sister, Maxine, flew in to help me get all boxed up and without her, I wouldn't be able to make even THIS short post.
There's not too much cooking in my literary life. My brain is full of stories that I don't really have time to put down.
I've just wrapped up one of my best semesters teaching. My undergrad class, the intoductory course, turned in nineteen fine stories. I can't beleive that they are just getting started. As far as writing goes, they are just toddlers, but their work was as good as writing I have seen in the advanced classes. I can say, for sure, that I know I didn't write this well when I took my first writing class.
I don't know if my students even visit my blog, but I would like them to know that they are great writers. Their work is gorgeous and ambitious, sometimes experimental, always heart breaking and just damn good. I hope they all keep writing.
Posted at 12:10 PM | Comments (3)
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December 17, 2005
Ah, The Joy of UNDERRATION
No, I didn't say ADORATION, I said UNDERRATION. The creators of the blog, The Syntax Of Things, asked prominent literary bloggers to list writers for the 2005 list of under-rated writers. I am proud to have been nominated for this distinction by C.A.A. Frye of the blog, Tingle Alley. Check out the whole list. What a kick to be in such good company. Question: Which new books do you think deserve more attention?
December 14, 2005
Hard-Core Lit-Nerds Will Appreciate This...
Okay, here is the premise. What if famous authors had written poems with titles that were anagrams of their names. (ee cummings becomes "nice smug me") You can click here and check out the whole collection. It's called the Holy Tango of Literature by Francis Heany. The thing that makes this so cool is that the poems with thier nonsense titles, actually mimic the style of the real writer. (Although I have to say that the "Maya Angelou" poem didn't sound like Maya.) So here is the "Gwendolyn Brooks" poem. Funny stuff. (via Lindayism)
WE LONG BONY DORKS
GWENDOLYN BROOKS
The Mathletes.
Seven in the Computer Lab.
We long bony dorks. We
Real big on quarks. We
Quote Python lines. We
Know arcs and sines. We
Not good at sports. We
Black socks with shorts. We
Beat up at noon. We
Out-earn you soon.
Posted at 06:16 PM | Comments (2)
Category:
Red Velvet Cake
'Tis the season... Here's the recipe, back by popular demand
Posted at 10:52 AM | Comments (2)
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Do You Remember Amanda Davis?
I spent Christmas of 2002 at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. If you’ve ever been an artist’s colony, you know that it’s a sort of personality lottery. Well, that year, we all hit the jackpot. There was a cluster of us, all about the same age: Me, Merrill, Margo, Abner, Bruce, Francis, Joelle, Emna and Amanda.
Posted at 10:03 AM | Comments (2)
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December 13, 2005
Christmas Story by Me
I wrote this story a couple of years ago when I was commissioned to write a family holiday story set in the south. I wrote this. They said it wasn't exactly what they had in mind. Luckily, the nice folks at Natural Bridge thought it was worth printing. Click here to read it.
Posted at 05:10 PM | Comments (2)
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December 09, 2005
Report From The Road: Poughkeepsie, NY
About three months ago, I received an email from Eve Dunbar, an English professor at Vassar College. Her class on Black Women Writers was putting on an end of semester finale-- the students were going to put on a recital in which they read from the novels studied over the semester and a few students were going to read from their own work. She wanted to know if I would be willing to come and read from as part of the festivities. I told her that I'd be glad to. Isn't this the sort of English class you wish that you had taken?
December 08, 2005
The New Yorker is On DVD
Did you hear that the every single issue of The New Yorker is now available on DVD? Yes, it's true. For about seventy-five bucks you can own every single article, cartoon, review that ever appeared on those pages. For kicks you can try find the first black person they ever published. (I may be wrong, but I think it's happened around that same time that the Mormons conceded that under certain special circumstances, black folks can be admitted into heaven. It was a trend.)
While this NYer thing is well and good, I want to see the entire archive of Jet Magazine on DVD. I want to own all the wedding annoucements, the beauties of the week, the celebrity puff pieces, the weeks best photos, the obituaries, everything. And if it were to be released, I promise I would buy it retail-- and from a black bookstore no less.
I promise with my hand on my heart that I wouldn't wait for the bootleg.
December 06, 2005
She Wants to Lead The Glamorous Life
Since it is the end of the year, I thought that I would take a minute to talk about some of the highlights of this year on the blog. Hands down, the most popular entries have been my posts about Karrine Stephans, author of Confessions of A Video Vixen. Readers post comments almost every day. The comments range from hard-core misogyny: She's a slut and she should be taken out and beaten. To the more progressive: What does it means that so many women's lives have been reduced to such degradation? To the concerned: What about young girls who read this book and want to be video vixens too? This last point peaked my interest.
Jervey Tervalon on LA
I don't know if you are hip to Jervey Tervalon, but you should be. He's a brother-author who is rethinking the way that we think about black men and the way they think about themselves. In addition he is heart-felt, outspoken, and execedingly real. (Some folks may remember his from-the-hip essay, Literary Sharecropper, about his nightmare with Simon and Schuster.) Now, on the eve of the execution of Stan "Tookie" Wiliams, the founder of the Crips gang in L.A., Jervey Trevalon writes about his boyhood in the shadow of the violence. Here's a quote. Click here to read the rest.
I ALWAYS THOUGHT Stanley Tookie Williams wanted to kill me. I thought he wanted to kill all of us pootbutts who didn't gangbang, and that fear informed how I lived my life as a boy.Thirty years later, I don't believe in the death penalty, and I don't want the state to execute Tookie. But I do want the people who grew up in better neighborhoods and now want to lionize the gangster to understand just how hellish he made many people's lives.
December 04, 2005
I've Been Tagged
Nichelle Tramble has "tagged" me! This means that I am to write fifteen interesting facts about my writing/reading life. It's going to be hard since I am so confessional here on my blog. What is there that you don't already know about me? The assignment is fifteen things, but I am going to just do the best I can. Okay, here I go. And these are in no particular order. Ahem.
December 03, 2005
Tayari & Pearl!
Here's some exciting news for 2006! Pearl Cleage and I will be doing two appearances together in the coming months. The first is on Saturday, February 18, at Spelman Collge. The second will be on Sunday, April 30, at the North Carolina Book Festival in Durham. I have say, the NC Book Festival looks so hot that I am going to have to give it its own entry closer to the date.
December 02, 2005
Writing For THE MAN
I was listening to the daily podcast from Slate.com, one of my favorite poscasts. (Try it, Ladylee, try it!) Anyway, there was on in particular that caught my attention. It seems that the pharmaceutical lobby commissioned two writers to produce a novel that would scare people so badly that no one would want to buy cheaper imported drugs from Canada. This is true, here is the link. Anyway, this got me to thinking.
Posted at 10:25 AM | Comments (2)
Category:
The Writing Life