I have long carried this image of myself as a wise, old woman. In that picture, my fluffy white hair smells of lavender and rosemary and I wear long, flowy dresses and handknit sweaters. I spend half my time in a little cottage in Rest And Be Thankful in Scotland and the other half wherever […]
The Red Couch: 2019 Book Selections
by on December 5, 2018 1 Comment
I don’t know about you but 2018 just zipped by! I can’t believe we’re already announcing our Red Couch selections for 2019. (And, if I’m honest, I’m already thinking about what we’ll be reading in 2020…) The books we read this year were some of my favorites and, as always, I’m amazed at the timing […]
The Red Couch: The Woman Warrior Discussion
by on November 27, 2018 Leave a Comment
Maxine Hong Kingston “talks story” to us as she unfolds stories of survival: cultural, physical, and spiritual. Told in modular form, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts is an invocation of what it means to carry story well through intergenerational relationships. Kingston honors language and body as she presses into the tension […]
The Red Couch: The Woman Warrior Introduction
by on November 6, 2018 2 Comments
In March of 1999, over 20 years after her publication of The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts in 1976, I had the honor of attending a campus lecture by Maxine Hong Kingston at the state college I attended as an undergraduate. The morning of Kingston’s lecture, I attended a mandatory session at the […]
The Red Couch: Mending the Divides Discussion
by on September 25, 2018 Leave a Comment
How often do we enter conflict in the posture of a hero rather than of vulnerability and curiosity? This question posed, by Jon Huckins and Jer Swigart in Mending the Divides: Creative Love in a Conflicted World is one which cuts to the quick. It sits at the heart of much of their discussion of […]
