Blog Archives | Page 8 of 40

Our Soiled Legacy

October 2022

Last month I visited the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. Founded by Bryan Stevenson, this stunning museum traces the history of racism in the U.S., beginning with the 12.7 million enslaved people who were forcibly brought from Africa, and proceeding through the Jim Crow era and the mass incarceration of Blacks today. Stevenson, a graduate of Eastern College and Harvard Law School, first moved to Alabama in 1989 to investigate prisoners on death row who had been wrongly convicted. A ...

The Day I Met Gorbachev

September 2022

I grew up during the Cold War, an era dominated by the two superpowers, the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Then in 1989 came one of those history-changing days that no one had predicted. Guards at the Berlin Wall, trained to kill anyone attempting to escape, instead opened the gates to freedom, and the hated wall crumbled without a shot being fired. As the tremors of “people power” spread, some 60 nations rejected their authoritarian regimes in favor of democracy. ...

Walking with Mental Illness

August 2022

(This month’s guest blog offers a unique perspective on mental illness, from a doctor from Northern Ireland who found herself institutionalized as a patient. Writer Sharon Hastings further details her struggles in Wrestling With My Thoughts: A Doctor With Severe Mental Illness Discovers Strength.) The nurse removes a glass nail-polish bottle and the flashlight I use to check patients’ pupils, then passes my handbag back to me. I bite my lip, hard, as a hot tear slides down my left ...

The Secret of Memoirs

July 2022

When I decided to write a memoir, I went to the library and methodically made my way through every memoir on their shelves. For years I had been writing idea-driven books, and now I had to learn how to write pure narrative. A memoir should simply tell a story, without analysis or commentary. Before long, I found the kind of memoir I didn’t want to write. Some people live such adventurous lives that they merely recount the facts. A fine ...

“No man is an island…”

June 2022

I’ve written several books about pain and suffering, and in 2013 I wrote yet another one, titled The Question That Never Goes Away. It recounted my visits to three grieving places: Japan after the tsunami; Sarajevo after the civil war; and Newtown, Connecticut, after the school shootings at Sandy Hook. The book had only modest sales, not meeting expectations. Last week, however, I received the following letter from my publisher in Ukraine, which gives a heartrending account of life near ...