The fact that African American history, culture, and especially literature means so much to me can be (and probably should be) cause for suspicion. But rather than in futility attempt to submerge into my own motives (and the motives for those motives, and the motives for the motives of those motives), I’d like to offer some quotes (and maybe, maybe […]

I promised I’d try to do better by African American women in the literature department. And in the process, I seem to have rediscovered an incredibly powerful voice that for me may end up a star in my personal galaxy. I’d seen the movie of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God and also read various bits of her […]

I’m taking my time getting back to the novelists. Today, I’m swinging back to one of, if not the, first African-American poet, Phillis Wheatley. Phillis Wheatley’s name, as with so many slave names, unintentionally mapped her history. Phillis was the name of the slave ship that brought her to America; she was only (according to her eventual owner in a […]

What follows is a brief reflection upon, and poem inspired (mostly) by Ralph Ellison. (Re the poem I also have to thank Toni Morrison for her insightful, if painful, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. It will be obvious to those readers of the latter that I was affected by it even while likely indulging in the […]

[March 2007] (Above: Carol some years back visiting my hometown of Fort Benton, Montana.) March is breast cancer awareness month. That isn’t lost on my wife and I, as we encountered breast cancer. My wife has been in remission for six or seven years, but neither of us will forget that time… ever. Below is an interview I’ve just done […]

photo, Jon Trott (c) 2005 Responding to a short paragraph introducing My Scarlet Seven lyric of a few days back (I guess the lyric itself wasn’t worth a comment! Haha), an anonymous poster asked: Can you clarify what you mean by “in fact a Christian because of erotic love” ? I posted the below as a reply there, but then […]

The below sermon, delivered at Jesus People USA’s Aug 12 service (at Joan Arai School), was provoked by many things too personal to blog on. Suffice it to say that I find myself continually falling short of God’s agape (charity). And that these feelings have recently been racheted up a few more notches as I observed others I love dearly […]

A billboard targeting sexual predators of children in Virginia (story ABC) has stirred controversy, in that it seems to target men. Ah, but isn’t it true that sexual abuse of children is overwhelmingly perpetrated by males? Yes. But it is also true that the vast majority of men neither desire nor have perpetrated any such crime. The critics of the […]

What follows is my presentation — or rather the closest written form of it I have — which I presented at Cornerstone Festival 2007′s CBE Tent this past July. It is a rough thing, a work still in progress, but perhaps will be of use to someone pondering a Scriptural feminist take on marital sexuality and/or biblical gender relations overall. […]

This is one of those self-indulgent posts that those coming here for commentary on politics may not find interesting. Consider yourself warned (wink). In 1975, I couldn’t wait to escape Fort Benton. I was an angst-filled 18-year old when I went off to Gordon College near Wenham, Massachussetts, leaving my childhood life in Montana behind. I seemed designed for the […]