ANOTHER LOOK

These writings are portraits of light and dark and the bittersweet realities of childhood and adolescence. Stories reveal how the joy of black-white friendships gives way to larger cultural forces and the necessary secrets and behaviors that keep the scaffolding of everyday life from toppling. A trip to see her father late in his life opens long buried wounds and questions about the family childhood experiences and the corrosiveness of secrets and denials. Her essays dare to look at the past in sweet and unsweet ways careful to let go of nostalgia when trumped by later insights. She holds on to what she finds true and though the costs of truth seeking are great we come to see the mirror of her life constantly changing as she adds insight to inform what she sees reflected back to her. Would that we could do the same and stand before a mirror that more accurately reveals what we dare to learn. - Kendall Dudley