Piece By Piece, My Mother Is Being

I Did Things I Did Not Understand For Reasons I Could Not Begin To Explain Just To Be In Motion, To Be Trying To Do Something, Change Something In A World I Wanted Desperately To Make Over But Could Not Imagine For Myself.

...i Have Come To Make Distinctions Between What I Call The Academy And Literature, The Moral Equivalents Of Church And God. The Academy May Lie, But Literature Tries To Tell The Truth.

Behind The Story I Tell Is The One I Don't...behind The Story You Hear Is The One I Wish I Could Make You Hear.

And Of Course These Days I Feel Like There Is A Nation Of Us - Displaced Southerners And Children Of The Working Class. We Listen To Steve Earle, Mary J. Blige, And K.d. Lang. We Devour Paperback Novels And Tell Evil Mean Stories, Value Stubbornness Above Patience And A Sense Of Humor More Than A College Education. We Claim Our Heritage With A Full Appreciation Of How Often It Has Been Disdained. And Let Me Promise You, You Do Not Want To Make Us Angry.

Stories Are The One Sure Way I Know To Touch The Heart And Change The World.