I don’t sit in cafés as often as I used to. In fact, I find myself reading through the menu at my former haunt just in case coffee has changed in the last two years. It hasn’t. There’s a comfort in that. I drink my coffee at home now. Hot espresso with cold vanilla milk straight from carton slides down…
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Colson Whitehead’s Nickel Boys: Another Devastating Dive into American History
There’s whimsy associated with Colson Whitehead’s writing style—a willingness to play. Nonetheless, the darker reality of race in the United States has always been an important aspect of the stories he tells (whether about zombies or elevator inspectors). Even in his prize-winning novel, The Underground Railroad (2016), the brutality of Whitehead's devasting portrait of slavery in America is mitigated by…
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Cum Quibus in San Gimignano
Once upon a time and countless moons ago, a town was built upon a hill. They had saffron and wine, and because of this, they prospered. Even when the Guelphs who were #TeamPope and Ghibellines who were #TeamHolyRomanEmperor pulled the town into their centuries-long power struggle, the townspeople’s purses bulged. The problem with bulging purses though, is that they’re terribly…
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Mothers’ Day Movie List: Horror Edition
Mothers’ Days is just around the corner and that means that it is time for another horror movie list, but this time it’s “(kill her) Mommy” themed. They say nothing is quite like a mother’s love and we certainly all feel safe in the arms of our beloved mothers. So, it only makes sense that a genre all about making…
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‘Mrs. Dalloway’ by Virginia Woolf: Death and the Isolated Mind
Virginia Woolf’s second novel, Mrs. Dalloway (1925), is many things. On one level, it’s a psychological portrait of London’s residents after the first World War. On another, it’s a love triangle, but long after the drama has concluded, and when all that’s left is dust. Doubtless, it is a feat of high modernism, displaying a trademark love of interior exploration…
