I completely believe in the power of love. I think that race, as it has been constructed in America, makes it almost impossible for people of different races to have a real conversation about race, let alone understand how the other person feels. Storytelling helps. Storytelling can be an entry point.
Americanah author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in conversation with Parul Sehgal
As it turns out, you can’t even take the girl out
Of the South. A good porch is hard to leave,

& that’s the truth. Gardenias & a hand-rolled smoke.
A fingerbone of moon tapping at the screen door. Who

You’re looking for depends on who wants to know. You know,
I have a cotton dress & a closed-mouth smile for any occasion.
from “Get Lost” by Amy Woolard
“A sign of just how bleak the country’s sense of the future is can be found in Max Brooks’s World War Z. Although the speculative novel — which rather cleverly reimagines Studs Terkel’s The Good War as an oral history of a world-spanning zombie onslaught — spends much of its time in rather bleak scenery, it also contains a clear trumpeting of hope. Because after Brooks gets done reporting how different nations respond to the assault of the undead, the interviewees (particularly the Americans) talk about how they fought back. Not only do they restructure a shattered nation, they recapture the concept of purpose, of collective action, of citizenship.” Free to Be Depressed and Alone: On George Packer’s The Unwinding
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“A sign of just how bleak the country’s sense of the future is can be found in Max Brooks’s World War Z. Although the speculative novel — which rather cleverly reimagines Studs Terkel’s The Good War as an oral history of a world-spanning zombie onslaught — spends much of its time in rather bleak scenery, it also contains a clear trumpeting of hope. Because after Brooks gets done reporting how different nations respond to the assault of the undead, the interviewees (particularly the Americans) talk about how they fought back. Not only do they restructure a shattered nation, they recapture the concept of purpose, of collective action, of citizenship.”

Free to Be Depressed and Alone: On George Packer’s The Unwinding

frowy
futz
garden house
givey
goozle
goozlum
hell-for-leather
hellbender
honeyfuggle
hook Jack
hookem-snivey
hooky bob
hopping John
hosey
izzard
Jersey mosquito
jugarum
julebukk
king’s ex
kitty-corner
kolacky
lagniappe
A sampling of some of the words found in the Dictionary of American Regional English — which is now on Twitter.