Threshold of Revelation By Meghan Evans Tony Kushner’s Angels in America: Part 1 Millennium Approaches tells the story of eight characters that struggle with lies and secrets surrounding their identity. The play is set in New York City in 1985, at the beginning of the HIV/AIDS crisis in America. Driven by fear, the characters confront […]
Read more "Threshold of Revelation"“Black Belt” by Archibald John Motley Fear can be a funny thing. It can be both motivating and crippling for humans. In James Baldwin’s essay collection The Fire Next Time fear is the common denominator for why people act or not act as they do. It undercuts Christian kindness and love; it demands respect through […]
Read more "Fear is Power"There’s no such thing as the Car or the Shoe or the Laundry Soap. But everyone knows the Pill, whose FDA approval 50 years ago rearranged the furniture of human relations in ways that we’ve argued about ever since.[1] This weekend, I ran across an article on Time.com memorializing the 50th birthday of the birth […]
Read more "The Pill Turns 50"“He passed a small graveyard surrounded by a high iron picket fence. A white graveyard, he thought and snickered bitterly. Lawd Gawd in Heaven, even the dead cant be together!” [1] In Richard Wright’s novella Fire and Cloud, Reverend Taylor notes the racial divide that crosses the fundamental basis of Christianity as he journeys back from […]
Read more "Beyond the Grave…"Reading Richard Wright’s “Fire and Cloud” and “Bright and Morning Star,” I was struck by the negative portrayal of Christianity and the Church within both stories. The picture that Wright paints in these stories seems to be a reflection of his own life experiences. In “Bright and Morning Star” the protagonist, Sue, finds a new […]
Read more "The Lord or Lenin"The Huffington Post is a favorite blog of mine, so when in the course of my surfing I ran across Jeffrey Kaye’s February 25th article, “Short Memories: Jews and Immigration,” I thought it was a really timely post given last week’s discussion. Kaye’s thesis is simple but hardly without controversy, “that the Jewish immigration experience […]
Read more "A Call for Empathy"At first glance, I assumed that this week’s topic (immigrant communities) would be primarily a study of class, race, and religion. Therefore, it surprised me that upon completing Bread Givers, my strongest reaction came from a gendered perspective. Because of my perception of Judaism as fairly liberal in regard to women’s issues, I had not […]
Read more "Two Worlds, Two Identities: Tradition and Womanhood in Bread Givers"After reading and viewing Brokeback Mountain in class, I was curious to see the types of reactions floating around on the web. Here’s what Christianity Today had to say. Harry Forbes includes as part of his review: “Looked at from the point of view of the need for love which everyone feels but few people […]
Read more "Christian Reaction to Brokeback Mountain"Caption: Gracie– Poor little Chinese girl! You’ll never go to heaven if you dress like that!
Read more "Dissing Fashion in 1901… culturally."
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