Pride

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  Thirty-nine children provided a nearly limitless source of free labor, and for hours each day, from June till September, we could be seen in the fields on our knees weeding and picking strawberries, potatoes, string beans, and corn. As we swatted away the endless reign of terror from deerflies, horseflies, and mosquitoes, one of the Angels would stand at the end of one of the long rows reading aloud to us stories from the lives of the saints. A midday swimming break in the spring-fed watering hole that Sister Catherine had constructed the year after we moved to Still River was a blessed relief. Each summer also brought with it a challenge—a project hatched by Sister Catherine. One year it might be clearing the brush from acres of land to increase the pastures for our growing herds. Another time we built hermitages, in the image of the early saints who chose to leave society and retire into the desert. This summer we undertook to build a fieldstone chicken coop under the supervision of the Big Sisters. At twenty by forty feet and ten feet high, its construction required an enormous effort. Gathering the building stones entailed dismantling the generations-old stone walls that ran through our property. Despite the backbreaking nature of the work, lugging boulders and rocks to the site, I reveled in the experience, envisioning myself as a frontier woman, a pioneer of sorts, as I learned how to mix cement and use a plumb bob to ensure that the walls would be straight. Recreation that summer included our first horseback riding lessons. As Little Sisters, we were required to ride sidesaddle, while the Little Brothers had both English and western saddles. I didn’t take naturally to horses, but my interest in riding was augmented by our riding instructor, Brother Dominic Maria. Before joining the Center, he had been Temple Morgan (related to the wealthy Astors and Morgans). He’d gone to Groton School and then Harvard College, where he was a member of the prestigious Porcellian Club. Raised on a stately horse farm in Maryland, he was an excellent rider. Until that summer, I’d barely noticed Brother Dominic Maria. But when he took my hands to show me how to hold the reins, I suddenly became aware of him in a different way. At six foot two, rugged and wiry, with jet-black hair and deep brown eyes, he was nothing like Brother Sebastian, my first crush of a year earlier, who was short and delicate looking, played the cello, and did indoor kinds of things like arranging flowers and writing poems. I didn’t understand my

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  I loved smoking after a meal, first thing in the morning, right before bed. In high school, I had to hide my smoking from faculty members, so I would walk downtown between classes and smoke behind the storefronts of Water Street, looking out onto the murky Exeter River. During those quiet moments down on the water, sitting on gravel and dirt, surrounded by abandoned cigarette butts and beer cans and who knows what else, I felt like a rebel. I loved that feeling, that I was interesting enough to break rules, to believe rules did not apply to me. Like most smokers, I developed elaborate practices for hiding evidence from people who might frown upon the habit—namely, my parents. I usually had an assortment of breath mints, gum, and the like on my person. If I was in a car, I would roll all the windows down as I drove, trying to convince myself that this would air me out. It didn’t take long for me to develop a pack-a-day habit, and sure, my lungs ached when I walked up stairs and sometimes I woke up coughing, and all my clothes reeked of stale smoke and the habit was becoming prohibitively expensive, but I was cool, and I was willing to make a few sacrifices to be cool in at least one small way. 22In the after, I turned to food, but there were other complicating factors. I was never athletic, even when I was slender. I was a child of the suburbs, so my parents enrolled me and my brothers in all manner of sports. Though they were both athletic, I never really excelled at any of the sports I tried, despite dutifully going to practice. In soccer, I was a goalie. To this day, my family loves to recount the story of me sitting near the goalpost, picking dandelions in the middle of a game. I do not recall this, but it doesn’t surprise me that the game held little interest for me. Flowers are pretty and soccer games are long and boring, especially when children, barely cognizant of the rules or the strategy of the game, are playing. When I played softball, I was the catcher, but I was afraid of the ball, how it raced toward me with such force and velocity. I did everything in my power to avoid that ball, which was not at all conducive to my mastering that position. I also had no interest in running around the bases. My ideal version of the game would have had me hit the ball, have someone else run around the bases for me, and never have to play when the opposing team was at bat.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  At some point, I played basketball, but I wasn’t tall yet—the height would come much later, toward the end of my teens—so I had no natural advantage and was not at all adept at making baskets or defending opponents or doing anything required of someone on a basketball court. Again, I had no interest in running up and down the court. The uniforms were not flattering. My favorite position was scorekeeper. I was very good at flipping numbers over each time a new basket was scored. In school, we played dodgeball and tetherball. We did the presidential fitness challenge and I finished the running portion last nearly every year—a mile felt like it was a marathon. In high school, sports were a significant and mandatory part of the curriculum, which was not ideal for me. I rowed crew and hated the old creaky barge of a boat we used. I played field hockey and was more interested in the merits of my field hockey stick as a weapon. Lacrosse simply made no sense to me. Ice hockey was a nightmare—spending so much time in frigid temperatures, trying to balance on two narrow blades while also basically playing soccer on ice with a small puck and awkward hockey sticks. I quickly concluded that I was allergic to sports. I still hold fast to this conclusion. I was, however, a decent swimmer. I loved the water, the freedom of moving through it, feeling weightless. I loved being able to do things with my body in water that would never be possible on land. I even enjoyed the smell of chlorine. I once set a school record for the fifty-yard freestyle. To be clear, this was in the sixth grade, but I still feel a small rush of accomplishment at the memory because in water, using my muscles and my lungs, I was capable and strong and free. My brothers, far more athletic, both took to soccer, my middle brother going so far as to play professionally for several years. I envied their palpable enjoyment of the sport, of athleticism, but I did not really covet that enjoyment. I’ve always been a woman of contradiction. My true loves were and still are books and writing stories and daydreaming. Sports were merely a distraction keeping me from what I really wanted to do.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  My first few tattoos were small, tentative. With each successive one, the ink has gotten bigger, spread wider across my skin. I love the act of getting a tattoo. It’s not so much about the design as it is the experience of being marked. I love watching the artist set up the workspace, ink, needles, razor. With my tattoos, I get to say, these are choices I make for my body, with full-throated consent. This is how I mark myself. This is how I take my body back. While I was in Lake Tahoe in 2014, teaching at a brief residency MFA program, I got a new tattoo, my first one in years. Before I got that tattoo, I was sitting at a fire by a lake with the writers Colum McCann, Josh Weil, and Randa Jarrar. This isn’t name-dropping. That is simply who was there because we were all teaching in the same program. Colum asked me, “So why the tattoos?” with his lilting accent and bright eyes. This is a question I get asked a lot. It’s a bit invasive, but you invite such invasion when you mark yourself openly with dark ink. People want to know why. We want to transgress boundaries. I include myself in this. I don’t think we can help it. I told Colum a version of the truth of why I mark my body like this, about what it means to have at least some measure of control over my skin. Here, in the middle of my life, I would do things differently if I had to do it all again, but I would still have tattoos. Now and again, I get the urge for a new tattoo. I get the urge to feel connected to my body in a way I am rarely allowed. I get the urge to be touched in that very specific way, the artist holding some part of my body, their hand sheathed in latex while they use this tool, this weapon really, forcing a series of needles into my skin over and over again, the pliant flesh becoming more and more tender. There is a certain amount of submission in receiving a tattoo, so of course I’m very much into that controlled surrender. I love the submission of turning my body over to this stranger for hours. I love the pain, which isn’t excruciating but is incredibly, infuriatingly persistent, accompanied by the endless whine of the tattoo gun, marking me forever. This guy who tattooed me in Tahoe was all about asserting his dominance. He made it clear that he was an alpha male. As he worked me over, he literally said, “I am an alpha male,” and it took all my self-control not to roll my eyes.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  But I also like myself, my personality, my weirdness, my sense of humor, my wild and deep romantic streak, how I love, how I write, my kindness and my mean streak. It is only now, in my forties, that I am able to admit that I like myself, even though I am nagged by this suspicion that I shouldn’t. For so long, I gave in to my self-loathing. I refused to allow myself the simple pleasure of accepting who I am and how I live and love and think and see the world. But then, I got older and I cared less about what other people think. I got older and realized I was exhausted by all my self-loathing and that I was hating myself, in part, because I assumed that’s what other people expected from me, as if my self-hatred was the price I needed to pay for living in an overweight body. It was much, much easier to just try and shut out all of that noise, and to try and forgive myself for the mistakes I made in high school and college and throughout my twenties, to have some empathy for why I made those mistakes. I don’t want to change who I am. I want to change how I look. On my better days, when I feel up to the fight, I want to change how this world responds to how I look because intellectually I know my body is not the real problem. On bad days, though, I forget how to separate my personality, the heart of who I am, from my body. I forget how to shield myself from the cruelties of the world. IV42I hesitate to write about fat bodies and my fat body especially. I know that to be frank about my body makes some people uncomfortable. It makes me uncomfortable too. I have been accused of being full of self-loathing and of being fat-phobic. There is truth to the former accusation and I reject the latter. I do, however, live in a world where the open hatred of fat people is vigorously tolerated and encouraged. I am a product of my environment. Oftentimes, the people who I make uncomfortable by admitting that I don’t love being fat are what I like to call Lane Bryant fat. They can still buy clothes at stores like Lane Bryant, which offers sizes up to 26/28. They weigh 150 or 200 pounds less than I do. They know some of the challenges of being fat, but they don’t know the challenges of being very fat. To be clear, the fat acceptance movement is important, affirming, and profoundly necessary, but I also believe that part of fat acceptance is accepting that some of us struggle with body image and haven’t reached a place of peace and unconditional self-acceptance.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  At some point, I played basketball, but I wasn’t tall yet—the height would come much later, toward the end of my teens—so I had no natural advantage and was not at all adept at making baskets or defending opponents or doing anything required of someone on a basketball court. Again, I had no interest in running up and down the court. The uniforms were not flattering. My favorite position was scorekeeper. I was very good at flipping numbers over each time a new basket was scored. In school, we played dodgeball and tetherball. We did the presidential fitness challenge and I finished the running portion last nearly every year—a mile felt like it was a marathon. In high school, sports were a significant and mandatory part of the curriculum, which was not ideal for me. I rowed crew and hated the old creaky barge of a boat we used. I played field hockey and was more interested in the merits of my field hockey stick as a weapon. Lacrosse simply made no sense to me. Ice hockey was a nightmare—spending so much time in frigid temperatures, trying to balance on two narrow blades while also basically playing soccer on ice with a small puck and awkward hockey sticks. I quickly concluded that I was allergic to sports. I still hold fast to this conclusion. I was, however, a decent swimmer. I loved the water, the freedom of moving through it, feeling weightless. I loved being able to do things with my body in water that would never be possible on land. I even enjoyed the smell of chlorine. I once set a school record for the fifty-yard freestyle. To be clear, this was in the sixth grade, but I still feel a small rush of accomplishment at the memory because in water, using my muscles and my lungs, I was capable and strong and free. My brothers, far more athletic, both took to soccer, my middle brother going so far as to play professionally for several years. I envied their palpable enjoyment of the sport, of athleticism, but I did not really covet that enjoyment. I’ve always been a woman of contradiction. My true loves were and still are books and writing stories and daydreaming. Sports were merely a distraction keeping me from what I really wanted to do.

• From Reading Biblical Literature: Genesis to Revelation (2016)

  Reading Biblical Literature: Genesis to Revelation142 Meshach, and Abednego, who sent his angel and rescued his servants who trusted in him. They disobeyed the king’s command, and yielded up their bodies, rather than serve and worship any god except their own God.” The king’s pretensions have led him to humility and understanding. ‹ On one level, this is an entertaining story of danger and deliverance that comes to a happy ending. But on another level, the story can make a serious point. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego “yielded up their bodies” by disobeying an unjust decree of the state to obey the higher authority of God. ‹ The biblical story makes clear that the men hoped that God would preserve them through the struggle, but it also notes that they had no guarantee God would do. Before the happy ending, there is a serious threat. And resisting the threat with integrity and courage is what the episode challenges readers themselves to do. The Demise of Babylon ‹ Chapter 5 of Daniel focuses on the demise of the Babylonians. In this colorful story, the king of Babylon is merrily eating and drinking at a banquet. In a moment of drunken arrogance, he has his servants bring out the bowls that the Babylonians had plundered from the temple in Jerusalem. He wants to drink from the bowls once devoted to Israel’s God. ‹ But then, the fingers of a hand appear, writing an ominous message on the wall. T o decipher the message, the king sends for Daniel, who is a Jewish sage. Daniel explains that all the words portend the coming demise of the empire. ‹ The Babylonian king dies at the end of the chapter 5, and a new empire arises, which Daniel identifies with both the Medes and the Persians. But in chapter 6, we receive intimations that this new empire also is transient. Here, the king decrees that people everywhere should worship no one but him for 30 days. It is another attempt to put the ruler in the place of God and to make the claims of the state absolute. Daniel refuses, and because of his disobedience, he’s thrown into a den of lions. By the end of the chapter, Daniel is saved, and it’s clear that no empire is absolute. Lecture 21—Esther, Daniel, and Life under Empire 143 The story of Daniel in the lions’ den has parallels to the fiery furnace story; the point of both is that no authority except God’s is absolute.

• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  Zionism had originally been a secular ideology, a rebellion against religious Judaism that was reviled by the Orthodox for profaning the land of Israel, one of the most sacred symbols of Judaism. But during the 1950s and 1960s, a group of young religious Israelis began to develop a religious Zionism based on a literal interpretation of the Bible. God had promised the land to the descendants of Abraham, and this gave Jews a legal title to Palestine. The secular Zionists had never made this claim: they had tried to make the land their own by pragmatic diplomacy, working the land, or by fighting for it. But the religious Zionists saw life in Israel as a spiritual opportunity. In the late 1950s, they found a leader in R. Zvi Yehuda Kook (1891–1982), who was by then almost seventy years old. According to Kook, the secular state of Israel was the kingdom of God tout court; every clod of its earth was holy. Like the Christian fundamentalists, he interpreted literally the Hebrew prophecies about the Jews’ return to their land: to settle territory now inhabited by the Arabs would hasten the final Redemption and political involvement in the affairs of Israel was an ascent to the pinnacles of holiness. 56 Unless Jews occupied the whole land of Israel, exactly as this was defined in the Bible, there could be no Redemption. The annexation of territory belonging to the Arabs was now a supreme religious duty. 57 When the Israeli army occupied the West Bank, the Sinai peninsula, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights during the June War of 1967, Zionists saw this literal fulfilment of a scriptural imperative as proof positive that the end time had begun. There could be no question of returning the new territories to the Arabs in exchange for peace. Radical Kookists began to squat in Hebron and built a city at nearby Kiryat Arba, even though this contravened Geneva Conventions that forbade settlement in territories occupied during hostilities. This settlement initiative intensified after the October War of 1973. Religious Zionists joined forces with the secular right in opposition to any peace deal. True peace meant territorial integrity and the preservation of the whole land of Israel. As the Kookist rabbi Eleazar Waldman explained, Israel was engaged in a battle against evil, on which hung the prospects of peace for the entire world. 58 This intransigence sounds perverse, but it was not unlike that of secularist politicians, who also habitually spoke of wars to end all wars and of the grim necessity of going to war to preserve world peace. In another vein, a small group of Jewish fundamentalists formulated a biblical version of the genocidal ethos of the twentieth century, comparing the Palestinians to the Amalekites, a people so cruel that God commanded the Israelites to kill them without mercy.

• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  The horoz was essential to rabbinic midrash. It gave the exegete an intuition of wholeness and completeness that was similar to the shalom that Jews had found in the temple and the coincidenia oppositorum that Christians experienced in their pesher exegesis. Like the Christians, the rabbis were reading the Law and the prophets differently, giving them a meaning that often bore little relationship to the original authors’ intention. R. Akiba perfected this innovative midrash. His pupils liked to tell a story about him. The fame of R. Akiba’s genius reached Moses in heaven, and one day he decided to come down to earth to attend one of his classes. He sat in the eighth row behind the other students, and to his dismay found that R. Akiba’s exposition was incomprehensible to him, even though it was said to have been part of the revelation he had received on Mount Sinai. ‘My sons have surpassed me,’ Moses mused ruefully but proudly as he made his way back to heaven. But why, he asked, had God entrusted the Torah to him, when he could have chosen a man of Akiba’s intellectual stature?13 Another rabbi put it more succinctly: ‘Matters that had not been disclosed to Moses were disclosed to R. Akiba and his colleagues.’14 Revelation had not happened once and for all on Mount Sinai; it was an ongoing process and would continue for as long as skilled exegetes sought out the inexhaustible wisdom hidden in the text. Scripture contained the sum of human knowledge in embryonic form: it was possible to find ‘everything in it.’15 Sinai had just been the beginning. Indeed, when God had given the Torah to Moses, he knew that future generations would have to complete it. The written Torah was not a finished object; human beings were supposed to use their ingenuity to bring it to perfection, just as they extracted flour from wheat and weaved a garment from flax.16 Some of the rabbis thought that R. Akiba went too far. His colleague R. Ishmael accused him of imposing his own meaning on scripture: ‘Indeed, you say to the text “Be silent until I interpret”.’17 A good midrash kept as close to the original meaning as possible and R. Ishmael contended that it should only be changed when absolutely necessary.18 R. Ishmael’s method was respected, but R. Akiba’s carried the day because it kept scripture open. To a modern scholar, this method seems transgressive; midrash regularly goes too far, seems to violate the integrity of the text, and seeks meaning at the expense of the original.19 But the rabbis believed that because scripture was the word of God, it was infinite. Any meaning that they discovered in a text had been intended by God if it yielded fresh insight and benefited the community.

• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  The fame of R. Akiba’s genius reached Moses in heaven, and one day he decided to come down to earth to attend one of his classes. He sat in the eighth row behind the other students, and to his dismay found that R. Akiba’s exposition was incomprehensible to him, even though it was said to have been part of the revelation he had received on Mount Sinai. ‘My sons have surpassed me,’ Moses mused ruefully but proudly as he made his way back to heaven. But why, he asked, had God entrusted the Torah to him, when he could have chosen a man of Akiba’s intellectual stature? 13 Another rabbi put it more succinctly: ‘Matters that had not been disclosed to Moses were disclosed to R. Akiba and his colleagues.’ 14 Revelation had not happened once and for all on Mount Sinai; it was an ongoing process and would continue for as long as skilled exegetes sought out the inexhaustible wisdom hidden in the text. Scripture contained the sum of human knowledge in embryonic form: it was possible to find ‘everything in it.’ 15 Sinai had just been the beginning. Indeed, when God had given the Torah to Moses, he knew that future generations would have to complete it. The written Torah was not a finished object; human beings were supposed to use their ingenuity to bring it to perfection, just as they extracted flour from wheat and weaved a garment from flax. 16 Some of the rabbis thought that R. Akiba went too far. His colleague R. Ishmael accused him of imposing his own meaning on scripture: ‘Indeed, you say to the text “Be silent until I interpret”.’ 17 A good midrash kept as close to the original meaning as possible and R. Ishmael contended that it should only be changed when absolutely necessary. 18 R. Ishmael’s method was respected, but R. Akiba’s carried the day because it kept scripture open. To a modern scholar, this method seems transgressive; midrash regularly goes too far, seems to violate the integrity of the text, and seeks meaning at the expense of the original. 19 But the rabbis believed that because scripture was the word of God, it was infinite. Any meaning that they discovered in a text had been intended by God if it yielded fresh insight and benefited the community. When they expounded Torah, the rabbis regularly amended the words, telling their students, ‘don’t read this . . . but that.’ 20 By altering the text in this way, they sometimes introduced into scripture a note of compassion that had been absent from the original. This happened when R. Meir, one of R.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  I put my hand on Earle’s forearm and felt with a dizzy sensation how tight and hot the skin was, as if every muscle in his body was fighting off God. If I had not been so certain of his prospects of hellfire and damnation, it would have tickled my pride to see what a challenge to God’s patience Earle managed to be. As it was, all I could think was how marvelous it would be when he finally heard God speaking through me and felt Jesus come into his life. [image file=image_rsrc2PS.jpg] I tried to do all I could to save my poor uncles from their heathen ways, but when I tried to get them to go to Sunday services, Earle just laughed at me, Nevil grunted, and Uncle Beau worked himself into a coughing fit. “Goddam women and their goddam churchgoing ways,” Uncle Beau yelled at Granny, as if she had put me up to it. “A man don’t have to have God on his ass to know what he should do. A man don’t need a woman preaching at him all the time.” “Stop cursing like that,” Granny told him mildly enough. “You the biggest fool in Greenville County, and it an’t the women made you who you are. You been after somebody to blame your life on since you was born.” She spit snuff and told me to get out of the house and into the sunshine. I didn’t argue with her. If I got balky, she was sure to make me squeeze up a piece of her leg when she had to take her insulin shot. She always made me do it when she was angry at me, which was plenty of reason to keep her from getting mad. “If God lived in a whiskey bottle,” I heard Granny tell Uncle Beau as I headed out the door, “He’d of filled up your heart a long time ago. But He don’t, and you an’t never gonna be saved, so keep your nastiness to yourself.” [image file=image_rsrc2PS.jpg] Uncle Earle got work building a carport and took some of the money to get Mama a little electric record player and four records. “That’s all I’m giving for free,” he told her, scooping up gravy with one of her biscuits. “I even bought you some of those old June Carter songs you like. What’s that funny one? ‘Nickelodeon,’ right?” He scooped and sopped, and drank sweet tea down like it was whiskey. Mama said he’d eaten so many of her biscuits by now he was like a child of her own. “A man belongs to the woman that feeds him.” “Bullshit,” Aunt Alma insisted. “It’s the other way around and you know it. It’s the woman belongs to the ones she feeds.” “Maybe. Maybe.”

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  Some said he had another family down to Eustis anyway, a proper Indian wife who gave him black-haired babies with blue eyes. Ha! Blue eyes an’t that rare among the Cherokee around here. Me, I always thought it a shame we never turned up with them like his other babies. Of course, he was a black-eyed bastard himself, and maybe he never really made those other babies like they say. What was certain was my grandma never stepped out on him. Woman was just obsessed with that man, obsessed to the point of madness. Used to cry like a dog in the night when he was gone. He didn’t stay round that much either, but every time he come home she’d make another baby, another red-blond child with muddy brown eyes that he’d treat like a puppydog or a kitten. Man never spanked a child in his life, never hit Grandma. You’d think he would have, he didn’t seem to care all that much. Quiet man, too. Wouldn’t fight, wouldn’t barely talk. Not a Boatwright, that’s for sure. “But we loved him, you know, almost as much as Grandma. Would have killed to win his attention even one more minute than we got, and near died to be any way more like him, though we were as different from him as children can be. None of us quiet, all of us fighters. None of us got those blue eyes, and no one but you got that blue-black hair. Lord, you were a strange thing! You were like a fat red-faced doll with all that black black hair—a baby doll with a full head of hair. Just as quiet and sweet-natured as he used to be. You didn’t even cry till you took croup at four months. I’ve always thought he’d have liked you, Granddaddy would. You even got a little of the shine of him. Those dark eyes and that hair when you was born, black as midnight. I was there to see.” “Oh, hell,” Earle laughed when I repeated some of Granny’s stories. “Every third family in Greenville County swears it’s part of Cherokee Nation. Whether our great-granddaddy was or wasn’t, it don’t really make a titty’s worth of difference. You’re a Boatwright, Bone, even if you are the strangest girl-child we got.” I looked at him carefully, keeping my Cherokee eyes level and my face blank.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  “You give her that, and tell her I think of her all the time.” He laughed his black laugh. “I think of her biscuits. These cooks here can’t make a biscuit a man can eat.” I played with the wallet and watched the other families on the grass. All the women had leather handbags with stenciled roses. Little tooled leather vines wrapped around the shoulder straps, the edges of the wallets. I ran my fingers over Mama’s wallet and wondered how it was done. How did they tool the leather? I opened Mama’s wallet and stroked the unfinished leather. Around us, women were feeding children and keeping close to their husbands. The glaring hot yard smelled of spoiling food, sweat, and sour baby diapers. I looked up at Uncle Earle and saw he was watching the women, sweat running down into his eyes. “How do you do it?” I asked him, lifting the wallet to catch his glance. “Don’t you have to cut all this stuff?” He took the wallet from me and ran his fingers over the leather roses, the engraved vines. “We use punches. You hit them with a wooden mallet, pound out the design over and over again for hours. Just the thing for men in jail. Keeps ’em busy and off each other’s necks.” He grinned. I stared up at him, not quite able to ask. He laughed at me then, understanding perfectly. “They count ‘em—the punches, the blades. If the count don’t match at the end of the afternoon, we don’t get out for dinner. Of course, sometimes they count wrong, and sometimes the razors break.” He wiped sweat on his jeans and brought his hand up, palm open. A slender metal blade glinted in the sunlight. He laughed again, that low growling laugh, while I stood with my mouth open. “They think they so smart.” He spit in the direction of the fence. He looked different without his long black hair, harder and older. Only his eyes were the same, dark and full of pain. Now those eyes burned in the direction of the guards walking the other side of the fence. “They think they so damn smart.” My heart seemed to swell in my breast. His hand wiped again at his jeans, and I knew the blade was gone. He was my uncle. I was his favorite sister’s favorite child. I knew absolutely that I was his and he was mine, and I was suddenly fiercely proud of him, and of myself. “I love you,” I whispered. “Sure you do, sunshine.” He laughed. “Sure you do.”

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  [image file=image_rsrc2PS.jpg] Family is family, but even love can’t keep people from eating at each other. Mama’s pride, Granny’s resentment that there should even be anything to consider shameful, my aunts’ fear and bitter humor, my uncles’ hard-mouthed contempt for anything that could not be handled with a shotgun or a two-by-four—all combined to grow my mama up fast and painfully. There was only one way to fight off the pity and hatefulness. Mama learned to laugh with them, before they could laugh at her, and to do it so well no one could be sure what she really thought or felt. She got a reputation for an easy smile and a sharp tongue, and using one to balance the other, she seemed friendly but distant. No one knew that she cried in the night for Lyle and her lost happiness, that under that biscuit-crust exterior she was all butter grief and hunger, that more than anything else in the world she wanted someone strong to love her like she loved her girls. [image file=image_rsrc2PS.jpg] “Now, you got to watch yourself with my sister,” Uncle Earle told Glen Waddell the day he took him over to the diner for lunch. “Say the wrong thing and she’ll take the shine off your teeth.” It was a Thursday, and the diner was serving chicken-fried steak and collard greens, which was Earle’s excuse for dragging his new workmate halfway across Greenville in the middle of a work day. He’d taken a kind of shine to Glen, though moment to moment he could not tell what that short stubborn boy was thinking behind those dark blue eyes. The Waddells owned the dairy, and the oldest Waddell son was running for district attorney. Skinny, nervous little Glen Waddell didn’t seem like he would amount to much, driving a truck for the furnace works, and shaking a little every time he tried to look a man in the eye. But at seventeen, maybe it was enough that Glen tried, Earle told himself, and kept repeating stories about his sister to get the boy to relax. “Anney makes the best gravy in the county, the sweetest biscuits, and puts just enough vinegar in those greens. Know what I mean?”

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  Uncle Earle picked me up and hugged me tight to his shoulder. I looked toward the fence and narrowed my eyes. We’re smart, I thought. We’re smarter than you think we are. I felt mean and powerful and proud of all of us, all the Boatwrights who had ever gone to jail, fought back when they hadn’t a chance, and still held on to their pride. When Aunt Raylene called my name, I took my time walking back to the car. [image file=image_rsrc2PS.jpg] “Why does he have to be so stubborn?” Raylene was leaning forward with her hands on the wheel of the Pontiac. “Why does that man have to go looking for trouble all the time?” “He don’t look for trouble.” I was still full of the magic of the hidden knife. “He just knows how to handle it when it finds him.” “He does, huh?” Aunt Raylene turned to look at me. “Well, if he knows how to handle it, how did he get his ass in jail? How come he couldn’t handle himself well enough to stay out of jail? How come he couldn’t handle his own temper enough not to break the jaw of the best friend he’s got in this county?” She shook her head and shoved her new pocketbook under the seat. “All you kids think your uncles are so smart. If they’re so smart, why they all so goddam poor, huh? You tell me that.” [image file=image_rsrc2PS.jpg] I went looking for Grey when we got back from the county farm and told him it was time to use that hook. He gave me a slow grin of satisfaction and promised to meet me “anytime, anywhere.” The look in his eyes was a match for the one I’d seen in Earle’s, the one I imagined in my own. A small drum of excitement began to beat inside me, and the beat only sped up when I got the hook down. I gave it to Grey when he came over that night, even though it hurt me to let it go. It would be easier for him to get it down to Woolworth’s without calling attention to himself. A boy with a sack could look perfectly innocent, while I would be asked what it was I was carrying. I ground my teeth in irritation but held on to the idea that I’d get it back soon enough. We would meet at Woolworth’s Friday night, when Mama would be visiting Aunt Ruth and I was supposed to sleep over at Alma’s.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  I ran my fingers over Mama’s wallet and wondered how it was done. How did they tool the leather? I opened Mama’s wallet and stroked the unfinished leather. Around us, women were feeding children and keeping close to their husbands. The glaring hot yard smelled of spoiling food, sweat, and sour baby diapers. I looked up at Uncle Earle and saw he was watching the women, sweat running down into his eyes. “How do you do it?” I asked him, lifting the wallet to catch his glance. “Don’t you have to cut all this stuff?” He took the wallet from me and ran his fingers over the leather roses, the engraved vines. “We use punches. You hit them with a wooden mallet, pound out the design over and over again for hours. Just the thing for men in jail. Keeps ’em busy and off each other’s necks.” He grinned. I stared up at him, not quite able to ask. He laughed at me then, understanding perfectly. “They count ‘em—the punches, the blades. If the count don’t match at the end of the afternoon, we don’t get out for dinner. Of course, sometimes they count wrong, and sometimes the razors break.” He wiped sweat on his jeans and brought his hand up, palm open. A slender metal blade glinted in the sunlight. He laughed again, that low growling laugh, while I stood with my mouth open. “They think they so smart.” He spit in the direction of the fence. He looked different without his long black hair, harder and older. Only his eyes were the same, dark and full of pain. Now those eyes burned in the direction of the guards walking the other side of the fence. “They think they so damn smart.” My heart seemed to swell in my breast. His hand wiped again at his jeans, and I knew the blade was gone. He was my uncle. I was his favorite sister’s favorite child. I knew absolutely that I was his and he was mine, and I was suddenly fiercely proud of him, and of myself. “I love you,” I whispered. “Sure you do, sunshine.” He laughed. “Sure you do.” Uncle Earle picked me up and hugged me tight to his shoulder. I looked toward the fence and narrowed my eyes. We’re smart, I thought. We’re smarter than you think we are. I felt mean and powerful and proud of all of us, all the Boatwrights who had ever gone to jail, fought back when they hadn’t a chance, and still held on to their pride. When Aunt Raylene called my name, I took my time walking back to the car. “Why does he have to be so stubborn?” Raylene was leaning forward with her hands on the wheel of the Pontiac. “Why does that man have to go looking for trouble all the time?” “He don’t look for trouble.”

• From Trash (1988)

  She was so nervous she kept rocking back on her heels and poked my statistics professor with her elbow as he tried to pass. “Quite something, your daughter,” he grinned as he shook my mama’s hand. Mama and I could both tell he was uncomfortable, so she just nodded, not knowing what to say. “We’re expecting great things of her,” he added, and quickly joined the other professors on the platform, their eyes roaming over the parents headed for the elevated rows at the sides and back of the hall. I saw my sociology professor sharing a quick sip from the dean’s pocket flask. She caught me watching, and her face flushed a dull reddish gray. I smiled as widely as ever I had, and held that smile through the long slow ceremony that followed, the walk up to get my diploma, and the confused milling around that followed the moment when we were all supposed to throw our tassels over to the other side. Some of the students threw their mortarboards drunkenly into the air, but I tucked mine under my arm and found my parents before they had finished shaking the cramps out of their legs. “Sure went on forever,” Mama whispered, as we walked toward the exit. The statistics professor was standing near the door telling a tall black woman, “Quite something, your son. We’re expecting great things of him.” I laughed and tucked my diploma in Mama’s bag for the walk back to the dormitory. People were packing station wagons, U-haul trailers, and bulging little sedans. Our Pontiac was almost full and my face was starting to ache from smiling, but I made a quick trip down into the dormitory basement anyway. There was a vacuum cleaner and two wooden picture frames I’d stashed behind the laundry-room doors that I knew would fit perfectly in the Pontiac’s trunk. Mama watched me carry them up but said nothing. Daddy only laughed and revved the engine while we swung past the auditorium. At the entrance to the campus I got them to pull over and look back at the scattered buildings. It was a rare moment, and for a change my hunger wasn’t bothering me at all. But while my parents waited, I climbed out and pulled the commemorative roses off the welcome sign. I got back in the car and piled them into my mama’s lap. “Quite something, my daughter,” she laughed, and hugged the flowers to her breast. She rocked in her seat as my stepfather gunned the engine and spun the tires pulling out. I grinned while she laughed. “Quite something.”

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  All that Lisa said was true of her own life and her generation. Others spoke proudly and triumphantly about their achievements and the strength they acquired in having to do things on their own. “Because my parents were so different I learned to navigate my own way in the world,” said Jerry, a thirty-one-year-old stockbroker. “I’ve learned to use my head and my heart. I’m not afraid of what comes along.” Because they learn at an early age that their parents’ values could differ sharply, children of divorce learn to think for themselves. Their independent thinking extends into learning not to take sides in any continued warfare between their parents. Barbs and criticisms often drone on for years between their divorced parents, but none of the children as older adolescents or adults in this study bought into the accusations. Quite the reverse. They were careful to form their own opinions based on their own perceptions. This, too, was a source of their pride. Given the continuing accusations of infidelity and selfishness in their families, they realized that they had to develop their own morality. Whatever their own family histories, they valued honesty, equality, faithfulness, and kindness in relationships. If they failed to meet their own standards—and many did—they were no different in their values from their peers within good intact families. They just knew a lot less how to live up to them. This generation did not engage in self-pity. Having learned to trust their own judgment they were pragmatists to the core, showing grit and courage against the ups and downs of life. Most held on to the capacity to hope and with it their capacity to change. As Evan said, “The divorce was hard but we can move on and build riches out of it. There is a lot of mix in my family with my dad’s three marriages and my mom’s two marriages and all their children. Mine is the generation to put things together after our parents’ divorce.” I asked Lisa how firm her decision was about never marrying. Was she really sure at age thirty-one she would never fall in love or find a man who would love her? She answered very soberly. “Look, I don’t know a lot about love between a man and a woman, but I know a lot about love and faithfulness. I’ve been blessed with two parents and a stepmother who did their level best for me. So the truth is that I know a lot about love, and yes, I’d want that more than anything in the whole world. With all my big talk, that would be my first choice.” She smiled impishly as she left. “If my luck changes you’ll be among the first to know.” TWENTY-TWOConclusions“What’s done to children, they will do to society.” Karl A. Menninger

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Thus the apostolic church appears as a free, independent, and complete organism, a system of supernatural, divine life in a human body. It contains in itself all the offices and energies required for its purposes. It produces the supply of its outward wants from its own free spirit. It is a self-supporting and self-governing institution, within the state, but not of the state. Of a union with the state, either in the way of hierarchical supremacy or of Erastian subordination, the first three centuries afford no trace. The apostles honor the civil authority as a divine institution for the protection of life and property, for the reward of the good and the punishment of the evil-doer; and they enjoin, even under the reign of a Claudius and a Nero, strict obedience to it in all civil concerns; as, indeed, their heavenly Master himself submitted in temporal matters to Herod and to Pilate, and rendered unto Caesar the things that were Caesar’s. But in their spiritual calling they allowed nothing to be prescribed or forbidden to them by the authorities of the state. Their principle was, to "obey God rather than men." For this principle, for their allegiance to the King of kings, they were always ready to suffer imprisonment, insult, persecution, and death, but never to resort to carnal weapons, or stir up rebellion and revolution. "The weapons of our warfare," says Paul, "are not carnal, but mighty through God." Martyrdom is a far nobler heroism than resistance with fire and sword, and leads with greater certainty at last to a thorough and permanent victory. The apostolic church, as to its membership, was not free from impurities, the after-workings of Judaism and heathenism and the natural man. But in virtue of an inherent authority it exercised rigid discipline, and thus steadily asserted its dignity and holiness. It was not perfect; but it earnestly strove after the perfection of manhood in Christ, and longed and hoped for the reappearance of the Lord in glory, to the exaltation of his people. It was as yet not actually universal, but a little flock compared with the hostile hosts of the heathen and Jewish world; yet it carried in itself the principle of true catholicity, the power and pledge of its victory over all other religions, and its final prevalence among all nations of the earth and in all classes of society.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  AMBROSE. Or else, the form of the first command is a general one adapted to all, but the following example seems to be proposed to the stewards, that is, the priests; and therefore it follows, And the Lord said, Who then is that faithful and wise steward, whom his Lord shall make ruler over his household, to give, them their portion of meat in due season? THEOPHYLACT. The above-mentioned parable relates to all the faithful in common, but now hear what suits the Apostles and teachers. For I ask, where will be found the steward, that possesses in himself faithfulness and wisdom? for as in the management of goods, whether a man be careless yet faithful to his master, or else wise yet unfaithful, the things of the master perish; so also in the things of God there is need of faithfulness and wisdom. For I have known many servants of God, and faithful men, who because they were unable to manage ecclesiastical affairs, have destroyed not only possessions, but souls, exercising towards sinners indiscreet virtue by extravagant rules of penance or unseasonable indulgence. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. 77. in Matt.) But our Lord here asks the question not as ignorant, who was a faithful and wise steward, but wishing to imply the rareness of such, and the greatness of this kind of chief government. THEOPHYLACT. Whosoever then has been found a faithful and wise steward, let him bear rule over the Lord’s household, that he may give them their portion of meat in due season, either the word of doctrine by which their souls are fed, or the example of works by which their life is fashioned. AUGUSTINE. (de Qu. Ev. l. ii. c. 26.) Now he says portion, because of suiting His measure to the capacity of his several hearers. ISIDORE OF PELEUSIUM. (l. 3. Ep. 170.) It was added also in their due season, because a benefit not conferred at its proper time is rendered vain, and loses the name of a benefit. The same bread is not equally coveted by the hungry man, and him that is satisfied. But with respect to this servant’s reward for his stewardship, He adds, Blessed is that servant whom his Lord when he cometh shall find so doing. BASIL. (in Proœm. in reg. fus.) He says not, ‘doing,’ as if by chance, but so doing. For not only conquest is honourable, but to contend lawfully, which is to perform each thing as we have been commanded. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. Thus the faithful and wise servant prudently giving out in due season the servants’ food, that is, their spiritual meat, will be blessed according to the Saviour’s word, in that he will obtain still greater things, and will be thought worthy of the rewards which are duo to friends. Hence it follows, Of a truth I say unto you, that he will make him ruler over all that he hath.