Coyote at the Crossroads, Revisited
He darted out of the construction site to my right into the middle of early-evening traffic. A large dog running wild. The SUV ahead of me swerved and braked, but nipped him in the back legs. The dog spun in circles, coming to rest in the middle of the left-turn lane for oncoming traffic. I…
The Art of the Meal
My husband can take canned vegetables, like green beans or spinach, and make you swear they were fresh when he started. While this is a skill you may never see celebrated on cooking channels, it sure enough works for us. Our plates are the orphaned lids of Tupperware containers. The cup that holds melted butter…
“Take my hand, precious Lord. Lead me home.”
This is the seventh in a series of excerpts from my memoir, The Edge of All the Light You Have. It follows “How can we be reconciled….” In January of 1970, a white man sat having a cup of coffee in the Baptist Building in Raleigh. He was perusing The News & Observer for articles about the shooting…
The Lynching of Noah Cherry
The intersections of infamy in our Southern history astound me. When I was growing up, no one ever mentioned that there had been a lynching in Princess Anne County, right around the corner from my grandparents’ farm. The first time I learned about Noah Cherry was in 2019, at the Legacy Museum of the Equal…
“How can we be reconciled….”
The Key to the Town of Wake Forest unlocked nothing. This is the sixth in a series of excerpts from my memoir, The Edge of All the Light You Have: a story across time and race (formerly From Where I Stand). In early June 1999, I found myself on the road connecting New York City…
“It could be my house tonight….”
This is the fifth in a series of excerpts from my memoir, The Edge of All the Light You Have (formerly, From Where I Stand). In the cartoon, a portly man, in clothes several sizes too small for him, stands in front of a church, a double-barrel shotgun stuffed under one arm. Above him is…
“…refugees from a war zone”
The fourth in a series of chapters from my memoir, The Edge of All the Light You Have (formerly, From Where I Stand). This post follows “This is our fight, too.” Two days after the shooting, it was Monday morning and back to school. After they dropped us off, Mom and Dad went with MaMaw…
“This is our fight, too.”
This post is the third in a series of excerpts from my memoir, From Where I Stand, a story of love across race and time. This post follows “Choose this day….” Mom had put a ham in the oven that morning, but forgotten to turn the oven on. When MaMaw took Bryant back to the parsonage…
“Choose this day…”
An excerpt from my memoir, From Where I Stand, a story of love across race and time. This post follows “I thought they would come for me.” Sunday morning, December 14th, dawned clear and cold, stubbornly cheerful. Granddaddy was outside, smoking his pipe. He poked around with his cane in the weeds and ivy on…
“I thought they would come for me.”
An excerpt from my memoir, From Where I Stand, a story of love across race and time. This post follows from a previous one, “You going to that party?” A few days before, the deacons of my father’s church threatened him that, if he allowed his children’s party to go on as planned, with both…
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holy discomfort: Love letters from a reluctant Christian 