newyorker--2020-08-30--How Black Lives Matter Is Changing the Church

One December evening , in 2014 , Brenda Salter McNeil , a pastor and Black evangelical leader , descended into a church basement in Ferguson , Missouri , to meet with young activists from a broad-based group called Ferguson Action .
In the four months since Michael Brown , a local eighteen-year-old , had been fatally shot by Darren Wilson , a police officer , Ferguson had become the national center of protest against police violence and the proving ground for the new Black Lives Matter movement ; some of the activists running Ferguson Action went on to lead the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , who is in her fifties and wears thick-rimmed glasses , had come with a handful of other evangelical leaders on a pilgrimage sponsored by Sojourners , a progressive evangelical organization , to ask the activists what role the church should take in addressing police brutality against people of color .
Several of the religious leaders who came that day were proponents of a church movement called racial reconciliation , which seeks to end racism by addressing it as a sin in individuals that can be eradicated through Biblical study , confession , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at the age of nineteen and went on to receive a master-of-divinity degree at Fuller Theological Seminary , where she began to identify as evangelical—was one of the most prominent figures in the racial-reconciliation movement .
For the previous thirty years , she had touted reconciliation around the world , often addressing tens of thousands of listeners , mostly conservative white evangelicals , at conferences and megachurches .
When she spoke , she explicitly avoided talking about aspects of structural racism , such as the racial wealth gap , or the high death @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she sought to insure that her sermons were rooted in the Bible and not , as she saw it , in politics .
She also stayed away from topics such as sexuality and abortion , for fear that she ’ d be labelled a liberal with a hidden agenda .
Her workshops focussed on inspiring personal stories but left listeners with few practical tools to root out racism in their communities .
To the young activists in Ferguson , the church ’ s failure to address systemic racial injustice in the United States @ @ @ @ @ @ @ part of the problem .
In addition , they took issue with what they saw as the church ’ s culture of homophobia and misogyny .
That evening , when Salter McNeil and others asked the activists how the church could support them , the young activists expressed their rage .
“ They told us that they hated the church ’ s misogyny and hypocrisy , and how we treated L.G.B.T.Q .
people , ” Salter McNeil told me recently .
“ They said , ‘ It seems like you work harder to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to let them in.
’ ” The more she listened , the more Salter McNeil began to think that the activists had a point .
“ It was that night that I really understood how disappointed young people of color had become with the church .
They experienced us as not simply irrelevant but on the wrong side of justice.
” The next day , the activists sent a text to the evangelical leaders .
“ We are meeting on the steps of the municipal court building at 4 P.M. Are you coming @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ The message was put up or shut up , ” Salter McNeil said .
Although she was accustomed to preaching before thousands of listeners , she was terrified to take part in a street protest : she worried that she would get trapped in a crowd and attacked by the police .
She didn ’ t know the basics of preparing for such an endeavor : that , for example , she was supposed to carry a driver ’ s license in case she was arrested , to scrawl the number of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and to have a cloth mask to cover her face in case the police shot canisters of tear gas .
She decided to attend anyway .
When she arrived at the courthouse , she was startled by the diversity of her fellow-protesters .
She saw older white Mennonites dressed in bonnets holding a white sheet that said “ Black Lives Matter.
” The police had put up barricades to stop the protesters from reaching the courthouse steps , and some of the protesters began to shake them , trying to pull them down @ @ @ @ @ @ @ white protester with spiky hair rushed ahead and climbed the fence .
“ I thought , This little white guy is going to cause the police to react , and they ’ re going to react with violence against us Black people , ” she said .
Overwhelmed with terror , she knelt in the street and began to pray as the swirl of bodies pressed around her .
One by one , although she didn ’ t notice , the other faith leaders knelt nearby , and so did some of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , had expressed disgust with the church ’ s failure to take a meaningful stand for Black lives .
McNeil told me that , in that moment , she felt the nearness of God in a way that she never had from the pulpit or stage .
“ It changed my life , ” she said .
“ That day , Jesus came into the neighborhood.
” Salter McNeil is one of a growing number of leaders in both evangelical and mainstream churches for whom Black Lives Matter has prompted a crisis of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Matter did was highlight the racism and white supremacy that still has a stranglehold on much of white Christianity , ” Jemar Tisby , a prominent church historian and the author of “ The Color of Compromise , ” told me .
“ You have this phrase and this movement that is forcing people , essentially , to take sides.
” In her new book , “ Becoming Brave , ” which came out in August , Salter McNeil writes , “ I began my journey sincerely believing that if I could convince @ @ @ @ @ @ @ politically motivated agenda but a Biblical calling rooted in Scripture , they would pursue racial justice.
” She now believes that this has proven naïve , and that religious leaders must begin more actively campaigning against systemic racism if they are to effect change .
Black Lives Matter has created this reckoning in part by prompting a backlash against the racial-reconciliation movement , which has held sway in evangelical circles since the nineteen-nineties .
In 1996 , Bill McCartney , a former football coach and the founder of Promise Keepers , an influential @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to launch a wide-scale effort to “ disciple ” a million men in the project of undoing racism through Biblical teachings .
The project was idealistic : in 1997 , as Chanequa Walker-Barnes writes , in “ I Bring the Voices of My People , ” the organization “ declared a lofty goal of eradicating racism in the church by 2000.
” At its inception , the movement ’ s aims were intensely practical : it funded efforts to rebuild Black churches targeted by arson , agitated for the hiring of more racially @ @ @ @ @ @ @ developed curricula around racism .
But early efforts to spur broader policy changes fizzled .
At the Promise Keepers conference in 1996 , when conversation turned to practical ways of dismantling racism through programs like affirmative action , white evangelicals became upset and derailed the discussion .
As McCartney told the authors of the book “ Divided by Faith , ” “ Of the 1996 conference participants who had a complaint , nearly 40 percent reacted negatively to the reconciliation theme.
” Over the next two decades , racial reconciliation moved away from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ instead on addressing personal feelings about race .
This focus sits more easily with the theological underpinnings of evangelical Christianity , which emphasize a believer ’ s personal relationship with Jesus and portray sin and salvation as matters of personal choice .
Today , the reconciliation movement centers around gimmicky one-off events , like pulpit-swaps , in which Black and white pastors switch congregations .
Conversations abound race are reduced to “ relational ” confessionals , often one-sided chats in which white Christians share the ways in which they ’ ve committed the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ color are cast in the role of confessors , required to hear and then to absolve their white counterparts .
Subjects such as mass-incarceration or economic inequity are written off as outside the purview of the Bible and tainted by politics .

One December evening, in 2014, Brenda Salter McNeil, a pastor and Black evangelical leader, descended into a church basement in Ferguson, Missouri, to meet with young activists from a broad-based group called Ferguson Action. In the four months since Michael Brown, a local eighteen-year-old, had been fatally shot by Darren Wilson, a police officer, Ferguson had become the national center of protest against police violence and the proving ground for the new Black Lives Matter movement; some of the activists running Ferguson Action went on to lead the B.L.M. movement nationwide. Salter McNeil, who is in her fifties and wears thick-rimmed glasses, had come with a handful of other evangelical leaders on a pilgrimage sponsored by Sojourners, a progressive evangelical organization, to ask the activists what role the church should take in addressing police brutality against people of color.
Several of the religious leaders who came that day were proponents of a church movement called racial reconciliation, which seeks to end racism by addressing it as a sin in individuals that can be eradicated through Biblical study, confession, and prayer. Salter McNeil—who became Christian at the age of nineteen and went on to receive a master-of-divinity degree at Fuller Theological Seminary, where she began to identify as evangelical—was one of the most prominent figures in the racial-reconciliation movement. For the previous thirty years, she had touted reconciliation around the world, often addressing tens of thousands of listeners, mostly conservative white evangelicals, at conferences and megachurches. When she spoke, she explicitly avoided talking about aspects of structural racism, such as the racial wealth gap, or the high death rate of Black mothers during childbirth; she sought to insure that her sermons were rooted in the Bible and not, as she saw it, in politics. She also stayed away from topics such as sexuality and abortion, for fear that she’d be labelled a liberal with a hidden agenda. Her workshops focussed on inspiring personal stories but left listeners with few practical tools to root out racism in their communities.
To the young activists in Ferguson, the church’s failure to address systemic racial injustice in the United States rendered American Christian leaders like Salter McNeil part of the problem. In addition, they took issue with what they saw as the church’s culture of homophobia and misogyny. That evening, when Salter McNeil and others asked the activists how the church could support them, the young activists expressed their rage. “They told us that they hated the church’s misogyny and hypocrisy, and how we treated L.G.B.T.Q. people,” Salter McNeil told me recently. “They said, ‘It seems like you work harder to keep people out of the church than to let them in.’ ” The more she listened, the more Salter McNeil began to think that the activists had a point. “It was that night that I really understood how disappointed young people of color had become with the church. They experienced us as not simply irrelevant but on the wrong side of justice.” The next day, the activists sent a text to the evangelical leaders. “We are meeting on the steps of the municipal court building at 4 P.M. Are you coming or not?” it read.
“The message was put up or shut up,” Salter McNeil said. Although she was accustomed to preaching before thousands of listeners, she was terrified to take part in a street protest: she worried that she would get trapped in a crowd and attacked by the police. She didn’t know the basics of preparing for such an endeavor: that, for example, she was supposed to carry a driver’s license in case she was arrested, to scrawl the number of an emergency contact on her arm, and to have a cloth mask to cover her face in case the police shot canisters of tear gas. She decided to attend anyway. When she arrived at the courthouse, she was startled by the diversity of her fellow-protesters. She saw older white Mennonites dressed in bonnets holding a white sheet that said “Black Lives Matter.”
The police had put up barricades to stop the protesters from reaching the courthouse steps, and some of the protesters began to shake them, trying to pull them down. Salter McNeil watched as a young white protester with spiky hair rushed ahead and climbed the fence. “I thought, This little white guy is going to cause the police to react, and they’re going to react with violence against us Black people,” she said. Overwhelmed with terror, she knelt in the street and began to pray as the swirl of bodies pressed around her. One by one, although she didn’t notice, the other faith leaders knelt nearby, and so did some of the young activists who, the night before, had expressed disgust with the church’s failure to take a meaningful stand for Black lives. McNeil told me that, in that moment, she felt the nearness of God in a way that she never had from the pulpit or stage. “It changed my life,” she said. “That day, Jesus came into the neighborhood.”
Brenda Salter McNeil finds inspiration in the Biblical scenes that depict Jesus as a radical figure. Photograph by Brandon Hill
Salter McNeil is one of a growing number of leaders in both evangelical and mainstream churches for whom Black Lives Matter has prompted a crisis of moral conscience. “What Black Lives Matter did was highlight the racism and white supremacy that still has a stranglehold on much of white Christianity,” Jemar Tisby, a prominent church historian and the author of “The Color of Compromise,” told me. “You have this phrase and this movement that is forcing people, essentially, to take sides.” In her new book, “Becoming Brave,” which came out in August, Salter McNeil writes, “I began my journey sincerely believing that if I could convince evangelical Christians that reconciliation was not some politically motivated agenda but a Biblical calling rooted in Scripture, they would pursue racial justice.” She now believes that this has proven naïve, and that religious leaders must begin more actively campaigning against systemic racism if they are to effect change.
Black Lives Matter has created this reckoning in part by prompting a backlash against the racial-reconciliation movement, which has held sway in evangelical circles since the nineteen-nineties. In 1996, Bill McCartney, a former football coach and the founder of Promise Keepers, an influential evangelical men’s organization, helped to launch a wide-scale effort to “disciple” a million men in the project of undoing racism through Biblical teachings. The project was idealistic: in 1997, as Chanequa Walker-Barnes writes, in “I Bring the Voices of My People,” the organization “declared a lofty goal of eradicating racism in the church by 2000.” At its inception, the movement’s aims were intensely practical: it funded efforts to rebuild Black churches targeted by arson, agitated for the hiring of more racially diverse staff in evangelical organizations, and developed curricula around racism. But early efforts to spur broader policy changes fizzled. At the Promise Keepers conference in 1996, when conversation turned to practical ways of dismantling racism through programs like affirmative action, white evangelicals became upset and derailed the discussion. As McCartney told the authors of the book “Divided by Faith,” “Of the 1996 conference participants who had a complaint, nearly 40 percent reacted negatively to the reconciliation theme.”
Over the next two decades, racial reconciliation moved away from efforts to combat institutional racism and focussed instead on addressing personal feelings about race. This focus sits more easily with the theological underpinnings of evangelical Christianity, which emphasize a believer’s personal relationship with Jesus and portray sin and salvation as matters of personal choice. Today, the reconciliation movement centers around gimmicky one-off events, like pulpit-swaps, in which Black and white pastors switch congregations. Conversations abound race are reduced to “relational” confessionals, often one-sided chats in which white Christians share the ways in which they’ve committed the sins of racism, and Christians of color are cast in the role of confessors, required to hear and then to absolve their white counterparts. Subjects such as mass-incarceration or economic inequity are written off as outside the purview of the Bible and tainted by politics.
The Black Lives Matter movement has pushed the church toward a more urgent confrontation with racism. Austin Channing Brown, the author of “I’m Still Here,” a memoir about her childhood as a Black girl in a white church, told me, “Black Lives Matter has forced the church to move beyond an easy rhetoric of ‘togetherness.’ ” Salter McNeil put it more bluntly. “People are sick of the kumbaya party,” she told me. “The idea is that if we can sing in Spanish and eat with chopsticks, we are somehow reconciled. But young people know that’s hollow.” The problem, as they see it, is that racism is often a function not of personal malice but of the way systems are built: white people can profess love for racial minorities, but if their school system remains segregated as a result of decades of policy that benefit those in power, Black people will remain disenfranchised. “If you still support policies that cage up children, or that cause people of color to die of COVID-19, that’s not reconciliation.” she said. “It’s a smokescreen for racism, and you’re not going to put my face on your pamphlet.”
Salter McNeil told me that, for decades, she didn’t talk about racist policies, because she thought it would make her seem overly partisan. Now she sees these issues as beyond squabbles between Republicans and Democrats. “Partisanship is what party you choose,” she said. “Politics is about the policy that impacts people’s lives, and we should all be talking about that.” She finds inspiration in the Biblical scenes that depict Jesus as a radical figure—a man of color—flipping tables in the temple to point out economic injustice and agitating for the dignified treatment of lepers and prostitutes. Christ sought to upend corrupt social hierarchies, not to reinforce them or to look the other way; Salter McNeil now sees this as the heart of her own work.
Others have called upon the church to examine its own history of racism. In 2014, Jennifer Harvey wrote a book called “Dear White Christians,” which argued that racism has pervaded the white church in America since the days of slavery. In 2015, Michelle Higgins, a Black pastor and organizer, stood up before tens of thousands of people at a popular evangelical conference in St Louis, Missouri, and told them that, as she put it to me, “mission work was really an exercise in exporting racism, and that evangelicalism was a moral protection for white supremacy.” The backlash against Higgins was swift: by the next morning, she’d received numerous death threats. Today, her criticisms are gaining ground. “For the last five hundred years, Christianity has been influenced by Martin Luther’s effort to decentralize the church,” Lisa Sharon Harper, the founder of a progressive evangelical religious group called Freedom Road, told me. “For the next five hundred years, the principle effort will be decolonization.”
Since the killing of George Floyd, Salter McNeil has been busy agitating against police violence and speaking about the role that Christians can play in ending injustice. Before the pandemic, she might have addressed her listeners in person. Today, her audience is largely virtual: she speaks on podcasts, and preaches at Quest and Cornerstone, evangelical megachurches where she works as a pastor, via Zoom. She often critiques the shortcomings of reconciliation, as she and others have practiced it. On a recent episode of the podcast “Churchleaders,” she prayed aloud with the host.“These children are in these streets around the world saying ‘Black Lives Matter,’ because they can see the hypocrisy and the disparity in how one group of people are treated by police,” she said. “Let’s stop making excuses.”
There are some indications that these new leaders are gaining ground in religious communities. Lisa Sharon Harper has gained tens of thousands of followers on social media. Austin Channing Brown’s book was added to Reese Witherspoon’s book club; and Jemar Tisby’s book, which was published in 2019, recently hit the Times best-seller list. Some conservative churches are also beginning to engage with movements for social justice. “Black Lives Matter has forced Christians to do some actual social-change work,” Drew Hart, a professor at Messiah University and the author of “Trouble I’ve Seen,” told me. Recently, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where Hart lives, Pentecostals and evangelicals hosted rallies against racial injustice, an effort that was unprecedented for the community. Despite considerable blowback, InterVarsity, a campus evangelical organization, has supported Black Lives Matter since 2015. “The example of Jesus’ life and work among the dispossessed, and his call for radical equality, serves as a blueprint for taking apart unjust systems,” Hart told me. “The gospel is actually powerful enough to transform our society if we take Jesus seriously.”
Of course, not everyone is listening. Recently, on Facebook, a white man chided Salter McNeil, writing to her that people liked her better when she didn’t speak about social justice and just quoted Bible verses. “Did it hurt? Yep, it did. I deleted him,” she told me. “But he made a telling statement. What white-dominant culture has said is that if you would just show us it’s in the Bible, if you wouldn’t be angry, if you wouldn’t bring up politics, we’ll listen,” she went on. “Most of us said, O.K., I hear that you don’t want the Angry Black Woman. If we could be intellectual enough, Biblical enough, gracious enough—if we could do it in a way that didn’t make white people feel guilty and shamed, then things would change,” she told me. “My sister, that just isn’t true.”


newyorker--2020-08-30--Sunday Reading: Conventional Wisdom

Sunday Reading: Conventional Wisdom

The nominating Conventions are over .
But , before the memories of the Democratic roll call and Kimberly Guilfoyle ’ s dulcet shouts from the lectern fade from memory , we ’ re bringing you a selection of pieces about the role of political Conventions in America .
In “ How to Steal an Election , ” Jill Lepore explores the complex , chaotic history of party Conventions and describes the turbulent nature of earlier political assemblies .
In “ Hot and Heated , ” A. J. Liebling writes about the Conventions of 1948 and contemplates the nomination of Harry @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Wisdom , ” Steve Coll examines the purpose of Conventions in the modern era .
In “ Verbage , ” from 2008 , James Wood chronicles the evolution of political rhetoric and its role in that year ’ s Presidential campaign .
Finally , in “ Joe Biden , America ’ s Un-Trump , ” Susan B. Glasser describes the optimistic tone of this year ’ s Democratic Convention and considers the unvarnished nature of Joe Biden ’ s acceptance speech .
Read and enjoy , sort of .
The homestretch to November @ @ @ @ @ @ @ quite anxious enough .
Predicting the Dewey vs. Truman Conventions—and their press coverage .
Do our Presidential Conventions retain any authenticity ?
For the Democratic nominee , the 2020 election has always been all about the President .

The nominating Conventions are over. But, before the memories of the Democratic roll call and Kimberly Guilfoyle’s dulcet shouts from the lectern fade from memory, we’re bringing you a selection of pieces about the role of political Conventions in America. In “How to Steal an Election,” Jill Lepore explores the complex, chaotic history of party Conventions and describes the turbulent nature of earlier political assemblies. In “Hot and Heated,” A. J. Liebling writes about the Conventions of 1948 and contemplates the nomination of Harry Truman for President. In “Conventional Wisdom,” Steve Coll examines the purpose of Conventions in the modern era. In “Verbage,” from 2008, James Wood chronicles the evolution of political rhetoric and its role in that year’s Presidential campaign. Finally, in “Joe Biden, America’s Un-Trump,” Susan B. Glasser describes the optimistic tone of this year’s Democratic Convention and considers the unvarnished nature of Joe Biden’s acceptance speech. Read and enjoy, sort of. The homestretch to November begins. As if you were not quite anxious enough.
—David Remnick
Courtesy Library of Congress
The crazy history of nominating Conventions.
Photograph by Irving Haberman / Getty
Predicting the Dewey vs. Truman Conventions—and their press coverage.
Illustration by Tom Bachtell
Do our Presidential Conventions retain any authenticity?
The Republican war on words.
For the Democratic nominee, the 2020 election has always been all about the President.


newyorker--2020-08-31--The Disturbances of the Garden

The Disturbances of the Garden

My obsession with the garden and the events that take place in it began before I was familiar with that entity called consciousness .
My mother taught me to read when I was very young , and she did this without telling me that there was something called the alphabet .
I became familiar with words as if they were all wholly themselves , each one a world by itself , intact and self-contained , and able to be joined to other words if they wished to or if someone like me wanted them to .
The book she taught @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Louis Pasteur , the person she told me was responsible for her boiling the milk I drank daily , making sure that it would not infect me with something called tuberculosis .
I never got tuberculosis , but I did get typhoid fever , whooping cough , measles , and persistent cases of hookworm and long worms .
I was a “ sickly child.
” Much of the love I remember receiving from my mother came during the times I was sick .
I have such a lovely memory of her hovering @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( that was for the measles ) and giving me cups of tea made from herbs ( bush ) that she had gone out and gathered and steeped slowly ( that was for the whooping cough ) .
For the typhoid fever , she took me to the hospital , the children ’ s ward , but she visited me twice a day and brought me fresh juice that she had squeezed or grated from fruits or vegetables , because she was certain that the hospital would not provide me with proper nourishment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a sickly child who could read but had no sense of consciousness , had no idea of how to understand and so make sense of the world into which she was born , a world that was always full of a yellow sun , green trees , a blue sea , and black people .
My mother was a gardener , and in her garden it was as if Vertumnus and Pomona had become one : she would find something growing in the wilds of her native island ( Dominica ) or the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ birth to me ( Antigua ) , and if it pleased her , or if it was in fruit and the taste of the fruit delighted her , she took a cutting of it ( really she just broke off a shoot with her bare hands ) or the seed ( separating it from its pulpy substance and collecting it in her beautiful pink mouth ) and brought it into her own garden and tended to it in a careless , everyday way , as if it were in the wild forest , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ palace .
The woods : The garden .
For her , the wild and the cultivated were equal and yet separate , together and apart .
This wasn ’ t as clear to me then as I am stating it here .
I had only just learned to read and the world outside a book I did not yet know how to reconcile .
The only book available to me , a book I was allowed to read all by myself without anyone paying attention to me , was the King James Version @ @ @ @ @ @ @ no need for me to go into the troubles with the King James Version of the Bible here , but when I encountered the first book , the Book of Genesis , I immediately understood it to be a book for children .
A person , I came to understand much later , exists in the kingdom of children no matter how old the person is ; even Methuselah , I came to see , was a child .
But never mind that , it was the creation story that was so compelling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ And God saw that it was good.
” The God in the Book of Genesis made things , and at the end of each day he saw that they were good .
But , I wondered , for something to be good would there not have to be something that was not good , or not as good ?
That was a problem , though I didn ’ t bother myself with it at the time , mainly because I didn ’ t know how to , and also because the story @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on from one thing to another without a pause until , by the end of six days , there were a man and a woman made in God ’ s image , there were fish in the sea and animals creeping on land and birds flying in the air and plants growing , and God found it all good , because here we are .
It was in the week after this creation , on the eighth day , that the trouble began : loneliness set in .
And so God made a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by running water through it ( the classic quadrilinear style that is still a standard in garden design ) and placing borders , the borders being the eternal good and evil : the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge .
One tree was to be partaken of , the other forbidden .
I have since come to see that in the garden itself , throughout human association with it , the Edenic plan works in the same way : the Tree of Life is agriculture and the Tree of Knowledge is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when there is a surplus of it , producing wealth , we cultivate the spaces of contemplation , a garden of plants not necessary for physical survival .
The awareness of that fact is what gives the garden its special , powerful place in our lives and our imaginations .
The Tree of Knowledge holds unknown , and therefore dangerous possibilities ; the Tree of Life is eternally necessary , and the Tree of Knowledge is deeply and divinely dependent on it .
This is not a new thought for me .
I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s relationship to the things she grew , the kind of godlike domination she would display over them .
She , I remember , didn ’ t make such fine distinctions , she only moved the plants around when they pleased her and destroyed them when they fell out of favor .
It is no surprise to me that my affection for the garden , including its most disturbing attributes , its most violent implications and associations , is intertwined with my mother .
As a child , I did not know myself @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
She is the person who gave me and taught me the Word .
But where is the garden and where am I in it ?
This memory of growing things , anything , outside not inside , remained in my memory—or whatever we call that haunting , invisible wisp that is steadily part of our being—and wherever I lived in my young years , in New York City in particular , I planted : marigolds , portulaca , herbs for cooking , petunias , and other things that were familiar to me @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the place I came from .
Those first plants were in pots and lived on the roof of a diner that served only breakfast and lunch , in a dilapidated building at 284 Hudson Street , whose ownership was uncertain , which is the fate of us all .
Ownership of ourselves and of the ground on which we walk , ownership of the other beings with whom we share this and see that it is good , and ownership of the vegetable kingdom are all uncertain , too .
Nevertheless , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ act of possessing .
To name is to possess ; possessing is the original violation bequeathed to Adam and his equal companion in creation , Eve , by their creator .
It is their transgression in disregarding his command that leads him not only to cast them into the wilderness , the unknown , but also to cast out the other possession that he designed with great clarity and determination and purpose : the garden !
For me , the story of the garden in Genesis is a way of understanding my garden @ @

My obsession with the garden and the events that take place in it began before I was familiar with that entity called consciousness. My mother taught me to read when I was very young, and she did this without telling me that there was something called the alphabet. I became familiar with words as if they were all wholly themselves, each one a world by itself, intact and self-contained, and able to be joined to other words if they wished to or if someone like me wanted them to. The book she taught me to read from was a biography of Louis Pasteur, the person she told me was responsible for her boiling the milk I drank daily, making sure that it would not infect me with something called tuberculosis. I never got tuberculosis, but I did get typhoid fever, whooping cough, measles, and persistent cases of hookworm and long worms. I was a “sickly child.” Much of the love I remember receiving from my mother came during the times I was sick. I have such a lovely memory of her hovering over me with cups of barley water (that was for the measles) and giving me cups of tea made from herbs (bush) that she had gone out and gathered and steeped slowly (that was for the whooping cough). For the typhoid fever, she took me to the hospital, the children’s ward, but she visited me twice a day and brought me fresh juice that she had squeezed or grated from fruits or vegetables, because she was certain that the hospital would not provide me with proper nourishment. And so there I was, a sickly child who could read but had no sense of consciousness, had no idea of how to understand and so make sense of the world into which she was born, a world that was always full of a yellow sun, green trees, a blue sea, and black people.
My mother was a gardener, and in her garden it was as if Vertumnus and Pomona had become one: she would find something growing in the wilds of her native island (Dominica) or the island on which she lived and gave birth to me (Antigua), and if it pleased her, or if it was in fruit and the taste of the fruit delighted her, she took a cutting of it (really she just broke off a shoot with her bare hands) or the seed (separating it from its pulpy substance and collecting it in her beautiful pink mouth) and brought it into her own garden and tended to it in a careless, everyday way, as if it were in the wild forest, or in the garden of a regal palace. The woods: The garden. For her, the wild and the cultivated were equal and yet separate, together and apart. This wasn’t as clear to me then as I am stating it here. I had only just learned to read and the world outside a book I did not yet know how to reconcile.
The only book available to me, a book I was allowed to read all by myself without anyone paying attention to me, was the King James Version of the Bible. There’s no need for me to go into the troubles with the King James Version of the Bible here, but when I encountered the first book, the Book of Genesis, I immediately understood it to be a book for children. A person, I came to understand much later, exists in the kingdom of children no matter how old the person is; even Methuselah, I came to see, was a child. But never mind that, it was the creation story that was so compelling to me, especially the constant refrain “And God saw that it was good.” The God in the Book of Genesis made things, and at the end of each day he saw that they were good. But, I wondered, for something to be good would there not have to be something that was not good, or not as good? That was a problem, though I didn’t bother myself with it at the time, mainly because I didn’t know how to, and also because the story had an inexorableness to it: rolling on from one thing to another without a pause until, by the end of six days, there were a man and a woman made in God’s image, there were fish in the sea and animals creeping on land and birds flying in the air and plants growing, and God found it all good, because here we are.
It was in the week after this creation, on the eighth day, that the trouble began: loneliness set in. And so God made a garden, dividing it into four quarters by running water through it (the classic quadrilinear style that is still a standard in garden design) and placing borders, the borders being the eternal good and evil: the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge. One tree was to be partaken of, the other forbidden. I have since come to see that in the garden itself, throughout human association with it, the Edenic plan works in the same way: the Tree of Life is agriculture and the Tree of Knowledge is horticulture. We cultivate food, and when there is a surplus of it, producing wealth, we cultivate the spaces of contemplation, a garden of plants not necessary for physical survival. The awareness of that fact is what gives the garden its special, powerful place in our lives and our imaginations. The Tree of Knowledge holds unknown, and therefore dangerous possibilities; the Tree of Life is eternally necessary, and the Tree of Knowledge is deeply and divinely dependent on it. This is not a new thought for me. I could see it in my mother’s relationship to the things she grew, the kind of godlike domination she would display over them. She, I remember, didn’t make such fine distinctions, she only moved the plants around when they pleased her and destroyed them when they fell out of favor.
It is no surprise to me that my affection for the garden, including its most disturbing attributes, its most violent implications and associations, is intertwined with my mother. As a child, I did not know myself or the world I inhabited without her. She is the person who gave me and taught me the Word.
But where is the garden and where am I in it? This memory of growing things, anything, outside not inside, remained in my memory—or whatever we call that haunting, invisible wisp that is steadily part of our being—and wherever I lived in my young years, in New York City in particular, I planted: marigolds, portulaca, herbs for cooking, petunias, and other things that were familiar to me, all reminding me of my mother, the place I came from. Those first plants were in pots and lived on the roof of a diner that served only breakfast and lunch, in a dilapidated building at 284 Hudson Street, whose ownership was uncertain, which is the fate of us all. Ownership of ourselves and of the ground on which we walk, ownership of the other beings with whom we share this and see that it is good, and ownership of the vegetable kingdom are all uncertain, too. Nevertheless, in the garden, we perform the act of possessing. To name is to possess; possessing is the original violation bequeathed to Adam and his equal companion in creation, Eve, by their creator. It is their transgression in disregarding his command that leads him not only to cast them into the wilderness, the unknown, but also to cast out the other possession that he designed with great clarity and determination and purpose: the garden! For me, the story of the garden in Genesis is a way of understanding my garden obsession.
The appearance of the garden in our everyday life is so accepted that we embrace its presence as therapeutic. Some people say that weeding is a form of comfort and of settling into misery or happiness. The garden makes managing an excess of feelings—good feelings, bad feelings—rewarding in some way that I can never quite understand. The garden is a heap of disturbance, and it may be that my particular history, the history I share with millions of people, begins with our ancestors’ violent removal from an Eden. The regions of Africa from which they came would have been Eden-like, and the horror that met them in that “New World” could certainly be seen as the Fall. Your home, the place you are from, is always Eden, the place where even imperfections were perfect, and everything that happened after that beginning interrupted your Paradise.
On August 3, 1492—the day that Christopher Columbus set sail from Spain, later having a fatal encounter with the indigenous people he met in the “West Indies”—the world of the garden changed. That endeavor, to me, anyway, is the way the world we now live in began; it not only affected the domestic life of Europeans (where did the people in a Rembrandt painting get all that stuff they are piling on?) but suddenly they were well-off enough to be interested in more than sustenance, or the Tree of Life (agriculture); they could now be interested in cultivating the fruits of the Tree of Knowledge (horticulture).
Suddenly, the conquerors could do more than feed themselves; they could also see and desire things that were of no use apart from the pleasure that they produced. When Cortés saw Montezuma’s garden, a garden that incorporated a lake on which the capital of Mexico now sits, he didn’t mention the profusion of exotic flowers that we now grow with ease in our own gardens (dahlias, zinnias, marigolds).
The garden figures prominently in the era of conquest, starting with Captain Cook’s voyage to regions that we now know as Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, and Tahiti, its aim, ostensibly, to observe the rare event of the transit of Venus. On this trip, in 1768, the first of Cook’s three voyages around the world, he brought with him the botanist Joseph Banks and also Daniel Charles Solander, a student of Carolus Linnaeus. The two took careful notes on everything they saw. Banks decided that the breadfruit of the Pacific isles would make a good food for slaves on British-owned islands in the West Indies; the slaveholders were concerned with the amount of time it took the enslaved people to grow food to sustain themselves, and breadfruit grew with little cultivation. And so the Pacific Islands came to the West Indies. Banks also introduced the cultivation of tea (Camellia sinensis) to India.


newyorker--2020-08-31--The Broom-Sweep Cleaning Out New York Estates

When a certain breed of New Yorker dies , specialists are summoned : attorneys , accountants , appraisers , auctioneers , and , sometimes , Alan Bloom .
Among those who settle estates , Bloom is known as a broom-sweep .
He is the final step in emptying a home , coming in after other dealers have had their pick .
Along with antiques and collectibles , Bloom takes tired appliances , old clothes , used medical equipment , and any food left in the refrigerator .
In the world of high-end clearance sales , he is the seeded sandwich @ @ @ @ @ @ @ One afternoon , not long before the city shut down , Daisy Edelson welcomed Bloom to the Emery Roth building on West End Avenue where she and her two sisters grew up .
Her parents bought their “ classic nine ” floor-through apartment in 1965 .
Her father , Gilbert , lived there until his death , in 2019 .
A corporate litigator , he counselled art galleries , dealers , and collectors .
He and his wife , Jane , who died in 2015 , were collectors themselves .
“ Old Master @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s life , ” Daisy said .
By the time Bloom arrived , the Old Masters had left the building , shadows marking the walls where they had hung .
While some estates go to a single dealer or auction house , many are divvied up .
The Edelsons consigned several pieces to Sotheby ’ s , where Daisy is a senior vice-president .
Stair Galleries was next , taking an etching by Egon Schiele and Diego Rivera ’ s pencil drawing “ Portrait of a Boy , ” among other works @ @ @ @ @ @ @ costume jewelry ?
” he asked Daisy .
“ Any bric-a-brac ?
” His hair carefully shellacked , he wore a roomy suit and a patterned tie ; his posture was slightly stooped , appropriate for someone hunting for treasure .
When assessing an estate , Bloom weighs the potential value of its goods against the cost of labor for his sweep .
If he does not spot salable items , he pays nothing , instead charging for the disposal job .
After half an hour in the apartment , he offered Daisy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ four thousand to empty the place , he explained , meaning that he would need to sell at least sixty-five hundred dollars ’ worth of its contents .
He would return in six days to finish the job .
It can be tricky to calculate estimates .
When Bloom tackled the home of a famous socialite ( he does not name names ) , it took several days , fifteen men , and thirteen dumpsters .
But too many dealers had preceded him , leaving little of value behind .
“ I charged @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thousand to clean the place out , ” he said .
Bloom , who is seventy-five , grew up around old things .
His father ran an antique shop on Coney Island Avenue , and Bloom ’ s older brother , Elliott , later owned a Manhattan antique business called Elliott Galleries .
The brothers worked together for decades , but after Elliott died , in 2011 , his widow sold the marble-fronted structure on East Seventy-ninth Street that had housed the shop .
“ It was kind of a shock , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ took a booth at Showplace , on West Twenty-fifth Street , but gave it up last year , and has begun sending his merch to small auction houses .
In the new New York , broom-sweeping is perhaps more essential than ever .
“ People don ’ t want to spend an extra month ’ s rent , ” he said .
“ Or , if it ’ s a co-op , and the closing is next week , they ’ re in a rush to get out.
” On the day of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Daisy ’ s sister Martha was on duty .
Bloom had brought three trucks—one for items he hoped to sell and two bound for a landfill—and encouraged his crew to help themselves to non-antiques , such as TVs and the liquor on the Edelsons ’ cocktail cart .
Broom-sweeps are messy , but Bloom was wearing a suit and tie again .
( “ He wears a suit to the beach , ” Alex Martinez , a longtime member of his crew , said . )
The men in the kitchen listened to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Bloom moved from room to room selecting items .
He was pleased with what he found : more art ( watercolors , drawings , sculptures ) , fur coats , Murano glass vases , a variety of silver pieces , lamps , even a sword .
“ That was my great-uncle ’ s , ” Martha said .
“ He was a well-known psychotherapist who worked with Alfred Adler.
” He also wrote a 1933 book , “ Nervous Breakdown : Its Cause and Cure.
” “ We could all use a copy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was pre-COVID .
The men emptied the place , but the Edelsons were unable to put it on the market right away , owing to the city ’ s coronavirus restrictions .
( The apartment is now listed for $ 3.49 million . )
Broom-sweeps were on hold , too , until June .
Bloom ’ s first job post-lockdown was in a high-rise building in Long Island City .
As his crew headed to the apartment , the elevator operator told them that the person in that unit “ had died of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ go up .
The next day , Bloom sent a second crew , which carried out the assignment .
“ The apartment was cleaned very professionally and the person who died hadn ’ t lived there for a while , ” he said .
“ If the guy didn ’ t say anything , they would have went up and nothing would have happened , but they were scared .
It ’ s just a crazy time.
” ♦

Alan Bloom Illustration by João Fazenda
When a certain breed of New Yorker dies, specialists are summoned: attorneys, accountants, appraisers, auctioneers, and, sometimes, Alan Bloom. Among those who settle estates, Bloom is known as a broom-sweep. He is the final step in emptying a home, coming in after other dealers have had their pick. Along with antiques and collectibles, Bloom takes tired appliances, old clothes, used medical equipment, and any food left in the refrigerator. In the world of high-end clearance sales, he is the seeded sandwich roll to Sotheby’s mille-feuille.
One afternoon, not long before the city shut down, Daisy Edelson welcomed Bloom to the Emery Roth building on West End Avenue where she and her two sisters grew up. Her parents bought their “classic nine” floor-through apartment in 1965. Her father, Gilbert, lived there until his death, in 2019. A corporate litigator, he counselled art galleries, dealers, and collectors. He and his wife, Jane, who died in 2015, were collectors themselves. “Old Master drawings were the love of my father’s life,” Daisy said.
By the time Bloom arrived, the Old Masters had left the building, shadows marking the walls where they had hung. While some estates go to a single dealer or auction house, many are divvied up. The Edelsons consigned several pieces to Sotheby’s, where Daisy is a senior vice-president. Stair Galleries was next, taking an etching by Egon Schiele and Diego Rivera’s pencil drawing “Portrait of a Boy,” among other works. Bloom was third. “Any costume jewelry?” he asked Daisy. “Any bric-a-brac?” His hair carefully shellacked, he wore a roomy suit and a patterned tie; his posture was slightly stooped, appropriate for someone hunting for treasure.
When assessing an estate, Bloom weighs the potential value of its goods against the cost of labor for his sweep. If he does not spot salable items, he pays nothing, instead charging for the disposal job. After half an hour in the apartment, he offered Daisy twenty-five hundred dollars. It would cost four thousand to empty the place, he explained, meaning that he would need to sell at least sixty-five hundred dollars’ worth of its contents. He would return in six days to finish the job. It can be tricky to calculate estimates. When Bloom tackled the home of a famous socialite (he does not name names), it took several days, fifteen men, and thirteen dumpsters. But too many dealers had preceded him, leaving little of value behind. “I charged twenty thousand, but it cost twenty-five thousand to clean the place out,” he said.
Bloom, who is seventy-five, grew up around old things. His father ran an antique shop on Coney Island Avenue, and Bloom’s older brother, Elliott, later owned a Manhattan antique business called Elliott Galleries. The brothers worked together for decades, but after Elliott died, in 2011, his widow sold the marble-fronted structure on East Seventy-ninth Street that had housed the shop. “It was kind of a shock,” Bloom said. He continued broom-sweeping and took a booth at Showplace, on West Twenty-fifth Street, but gave it up last year, and has begun sending his merch to small auction houses. In the new New York, broom-sweeping is perhaps more essential than ever. “People don’t want to spend an extra month’s rent,” he said. “Or, if it’s a co-op, and the closing is next week, they’re in a rush to get out.”
On the day of the sweep at the Edelson apartment, Daisy’s sister Martha was on duty. Bloom had brought three trucks—one for items he hoped to sell and two bound for a landfill—and encouraged his crew to help themselves to non-antiques, such as TVs and the liquor on the Edelsons’ cocktail cart. Broom-sweeps are messy, but Bloom was wearing a suit and tie again. (“He wears a suit to the beach,” Alex Martinez, a longtime member of his crew, said.) The men in the kitchen listened to jazz as they boxed up china; Bloom moved from room to room selecting items. He was pleased with what he found: more art (watercolors, drawings, sculptures), fur coats, Murano glass vases, a variety of silver pieces, lamps, even a sword. “That was my great-uncle’s,” Martha said. “He was a well-known psychotherapist who worked with Alfred Adler.” He also wrote a 1933 book, “Nervous Breakdown: Its Cause and Cure.” “We could all use a copy,” Bloom said. And that was pre-COVID.
The men emptied the place, but the Edelsons were unable to put it on the market right away, owing to the city’s coronavirus restrictions. (The apartment is now listed for $3.49 million.) Broom-sweeps were on hold, too, until June. Bloom’s first job post-lockdown was in a high-rise building in Long Island City. As his crew headed to the apartment, the elevator operator told them that the person in that unit “had died of the COVID.” The men refused to go up. The next day, Bloom sent a second crew, which carried out the assignment. “The apartment was cleaned very professionally and the person who died hadn’t lived there for a while,” he said. “If the guy didn’t say anything, they would have went up and nothing would have happened, but they were scared. It’s just a crazy time.” ♦


The Mail

I read with interest Jill Lepore ’ s fascinating narrative about how the Simulmatics Corporation ’ s early social-science research insinuated its way into John F. Kennedy ’ s Presidential campaign ( “ All the King ’ s Data , ” August 3rd & 10th ) .
She laments Simulmatics ’ s role as a political “ secret weapon , ” one that presaged the more sophisticated contemporary modelling that , in her words , “ alienates individuals , and undermines democracy.
” I see the linkage from past to present somewhat differently .
The connection between Simulmatics and today @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the impact that data-analytic models have on voters .
Not only is there no empirical evidence that the deployment of Simulmatics ’ s strategies caused voters to favor Kennedy , but there are no hard data demonstrating that current attempts to mine and manipulate digital information actually achieve their desired political effect .
Instead , the continuity from 1960 to 2020 lies in the perception that canny scientific manipulators can penetrate the political brain and deliver , “ Manchurian Candidate ” -style , the results that their simulations predict .
Simulmatics helped introduce @ @ @ @ @ @ @ putty in the hands of computers that attempt to mold their behavior .
This idea increases cynicism about democracy and its ability to switch course or effect societal change .
Lepore rightly concludes that “ there ’ s really no way to measure the influence of the Simulmatics reports on the Kennedy campaign.
” We should be clear that my father , the historian Arthur Schlesinger , Jr. , played no role in the relationship between Simulmatics and Kennedy ’ s 1960 Presidential run .
Although my father did express some interest in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had nothing to do with it .
Indeed , he never mentions the firm in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book , “ A Thousand Days , ” written five years after the campaign .
It is true that Simulmatics did contribute some reports to the campaign , but it ’ s worth emphasizing that , even without the company ’ s advice , Kennedy ’ s team was savvy enough to adopt tactics that increased his appeal to Black voters and openly confronted the issue of his Catholicism .
Margaret Talbot is correct in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , confrontational protests ” led by Alice Paul and her allies reënergized the movement for women ’ s suffrage ( Comment , August 3rd & 10th ) .
Yet to say that the passage and ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment was “ largely due to the new breed of suffragist ” gives short shrift to a concurrent evolution in strategy among more moderate suffragists .
Carrie Chapman Catt , who led the National American Woman Suffrage Association for a second time between 1915 and 1920 , was a brilliant strategist whose “ Winning @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a string of legislative victories representing incremental progress—for example , securing , in 1918 , women ’ s suffrage in primary elections in Texas .
Meanwhile , NAWSA ’ s congressional committee continued to lobby President Woodrow Wilson and members of Congress for the federal amendment .
My great-great-aunt Minnie Fisher Cunningham , of Texas , was one of the women who called on and talked to the men who were going to vote on the issue .
It took all kinds of suffragists to win women the right to vote .
Letters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s name , address , and daytime phone number via e-mail to themail @ newyorker.com .
Letters may be edited for length and clarity , and may be published in any medium .
We regret that owing to the volume of correspondence we can not reply to every letter .

Engineering Elections
I read with interest Jill Lepore’s fascinating narrative about how the Simulmatics Corporation’s early social-science research insinuated its way into John F. Kennedy’s Presidential campaign (“All the King’s Data,” August 3rd & 10th). She laments Simulmatics’s role as a political “secret weapon,” one that presaged the more sophisticated contemporary modelling that, in her words, “alienates individuals, and undermines democracy.” I see the linkage from past to present somewhat differently. The connection between Simulmatics and today’s political machinations is not in the impact that data-analytic models have on voters. Not only is there no empirical evidence that the deployment of Simulmatics’s strategies caused voters to favor Kennedy, but there are no hard data demonstrating that current attempts to mine and manipulate digital information actually achieve their desired political effect. Instead, the continuity from 1960 to 2020 lies in the perception that canny scientific manipulators can penetrate the political brain and deliver, “Manchurian Candidate”-style, the results that their simulations predict. Simulmatics helped introduce the now widespread belief that voters are putty in the hands of computers that attempt to mold their behavior. This idea increases cynicism about democracy and its ability to switch course or effect societal change.
Richard M. Perloff
Professor of Communication, Political Science, and Psychology
Cleveland State University
Cleveland, Ohio
Lepore rightly concludes that “there’s really no way to measure the influence of the Simulmatics reports on the Kennedy campaign.” We should be clear that my father, the historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., played no role in the relationship between Simulmatics and Kennedy’s 1960 Presidential run. Although my father did express some interest in hearing about the company, he otherwise had nothing to do with it. Indeed, he never mentions the firm in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “A Thousand Days,” written five years after the campaign. It is true that Simulmatics did contribute some reports to the campaign, but it’s worth emphasizing that, even without the company’s advice, Kennedy’s team was savvy enough to adopt tactics that increased his appeal to Black voters and openly confronted the issue of his Catholicism.
Stephen Schlesinger
New York City
Votes for Women
Margaret Talbot is correct in writing that the “inventive, audacious, confrontational protests” led by Alice Paul and her allies reënergized the movement for women’s suffrage (Comment, August 3rd & 10th). Yet to say that the passage and ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment was “largely due to the new breed of suffragist” gives short shrift to a concurrent evolution in strategy among more moderate suffragists. Carrie Chapman Catt, who led the National American Woman Suffrage Association for a second time between 1915 and 1920, was a brilliant strategist whose “Winning Plan” fostered grassroots support nationwide through a string of legislative victories representing incremental progress—for example, securing, in 1918, women’s suffrage in primary elections in Texas. Meanwhile, NAWSA’s congressional committee continued to lobby President Woodrow Wilson and members of Congress for the federal amendment. My great-great-aunt Minnie Fisher Cunningham, of Texas, was one of the women who called on and talked to the men who were going to vote on the issue. It took all kinds of suffragists to win women the right to vote.
Trish Nicholson
Alexandria, Va.
•
Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to themail@newyorker.com. Letters may be edited for length and clarity, and may be published in any medium. We regret that owing to the volume of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.


newyorker--2020-08-31--“Flashlight,” by Susan Choi

“Flashlight,” by Susan Choi

“ When you told people that your father was kidnapped , I think you meant he ’ d been taken away from you .
Stolen .
Death steals the people we love.
” “ But I never said he was kidnapped , ” Louisa repeated .
“ My mother made that up .
She makes everything up.
” Dr. Brickner answered with a contemplative expression .
I believe you , he seemed to want his expression to say .
Louisa gazed back at him unflinchingly , clothing him first in pity , then in contempt , and then in pity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ best , as if he were a paper doll .
There was nothing on his desk anymore to obstruct their calm view of each other , and Louisa wondered if he would notice , and thought that , if he did , she would find a new feeling to dress him in .
She wasn ’ t sure she wanted to have to do this .
She wasn ’ t sure if her suspense , as she waited , was eager or fearful .
These two possibilities seemed to have opposite meanings but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Dr. Brickner took a pen from his jacket breast pocket and dropped his gaze from her face to a notepad .
As he filled the pad with illegible writing , his face was serene .
He seemed to have found what he needed .
“ Why don ’ t you play with the toys while I finish my notes , ” he suggested as he wrote , but of course she could not move and didn ’ t .
He didn ’ t repeat the suggestion .
When he had finished writing , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said something about what a pleasure it had been to meet her .
He put out his hand and she shook it without standing up .
If he found this rude he didn ’ t let on .
Then she followed him to his office door with her arms crossed behind her , and , after some more pleasantries with her aunt , he disappeared behind his door again and Louisa rode home in the car with her aunt and a dull pain where the hard metal stump of the flashlight , shoved @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dug into her buttock .
Now she pulled the flashlight out from where she ’ d concealed it in the crack between her mattress and the headboard .
Aimed at the ceiling , it made a frail jellyfish of light , pierced by the stripe from the door .
Walking the beach at sunset , her father had always brought their flashlight , its weight and shape awkwardly housed in his slacks pocket .
If she let go of his hand and ran ahead a bit before turning back , she ’ d @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his slacks down on one side as he made his way toward her .
He ’ d been particularly cautious , her father .
Full of strange fears .
He was so afraid that she would ingest a sharp object—some piece of glass or metal accidentally included in her food—that at restaurants he would poke through her dish with a fork before letting her eat it .
In crosswalks , and even on sidewalks , he was afraid she ’ d be hit by a car , and even after she turned ten @ @ @ @ @ @ @ any time that they walked out in public .
He feared the primal wildness of domesticated animals and would not let Louisa have a pet .
And he must have feared darkness , too , always bringing that flashlight on their walks , despite how long the sunset ’ s afterglow lived in the sky , despite his never letting Louisa stay out late enough to see the first stars .
Except for that very last night , when they finally went out on the breakwater , and went so far that it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to shore .
They ’ d needed the flashlight to be sure of their footing on the slippery rocks , her father ’ s grip almost crushing her fingers .
When the flashlight fell , it landed almost noiselessly in sand .
This fact—that the flashlight , in falling , had landed almost noiselessly in sand—rippled over her like the light rippling over the ceiling .
It was not a memory , as Louisa understood memory : a fragmented , juddering filmstrip of image and sound .
This wasn ’ t something but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was expected .
There had been no clattering onto the rocks .
There had been no splash in the water .
The flashlight had fallen almost noiselessly into the sand .
Her father , it was understood , had slipped and fallen off the breakwater , and drowned .
Louisa had been found unconscious on the shore .
Her father , his body , had not been found at all .
Currents explained Louisa ’ s father ’ s body ’ s disappearance .
Shock explained Louisa ’ s transposition to the sand @ @ @ @ @ @ @ None of it was surprising .
The flashlight had fallen almost noiselessly into the sand , but it was possible that Louisa had dropped it there herself ; she might have obtained the flashlight from her slipping , falling , drowning father , walked the rest of the causeway of slippery rocks to the shore , and dropped the flashlight almost noiselessly herself .
What had happened to that flashlight ?
Of course it was gone .
She had remembered it only now , holding this flashlight , gripping its warm metallic heft @ @ @ @ @ @ @ loved this flashlight and not just because she had stolen it from Dr. Brickner .
It was a faithful object .
It had been forgotten , without purpose , before she had snatched it away .
She would have to get fresh batteries for it , but that would be easy ; she would steal them from the rack at the checkout the next time she went to the store with her aunt .
Her door swung open and the spill of light from the hallway washed over the ceiling and drowned her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her mother ’ s cracked voice .
The wheelchair bumbled through the doorframe , banging and scraping in haste , and then her mother was on her , having somehow launched herself across the space between the wheelchair and the bed , confirming what Louisa kept saying : her mother didn ’ t need the chair ; she was faking .
“ Oh , Louisa , Louisa , oh , sweetie , ” her mother was keening , drowning Louisa in touch as Louisa tried to thrash her away .
Now her aunt @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ What a sound !
It ’ s like she ’ s being murdered !
” her aunt cried .
“ It ’ s making my hair stand on end !
Here ’ s milk—it should calm her right down.
” But she didn ’ t want milk or her mother ’ s hands on her .
Why wouldn ’ t they let her alone ?
She kicked with everything she had and the flashlight fell out of her covers and crashed to the floor .
It made such a bang that her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Then her aunt saw the cause of the noise and picked it up from the floor .
“ I can ’ t believe it , ” her aunt said .
“ When the doctor called this evening and told me you ’ d taken his flashlight , I gave him a piece of my mind .
You ’ ve made a liar out of me.
” Then they did let her alone , though she didn ’ t see which of them yanked the door shut , leaving her in darkness .
@

“You don’t think that stealing is wrong?” Dr. Brickner said now.
“I know that it’s wrong. I don’t see why. I don’t see what difference it makes.”
“Kidnapping is stealing, isn’t it?”
He lowered the flashlight onto the surface of his desk so that its light shrank beneath it and vanished, along with all the white, yellow, and pink sheets of paper describing Louisa’s problems and her crimes. Then, with a click, he turned the flashlight off. Twilight settled around them, taking on the dim shapes of the room. Dr. Brickner set to work raising the blinds, which required much more effort and time than lowering them had. He had to haul on the dangling cords hand over hand, as if they were a part of something really serious, like a boat or a flagpole. The blinds screamed in protest as they rose, but finally sunlight broke into the room. It was orange, like the light from a fire. Ever since arriving in California, Louisa had constantly noticed the light. Even Dr. Brickner, who presumably wasn’t new here, seemed surprised by it and gazed out the window for a moment before sitting back down in his desk chair to face her.
“When you told people that your father was kidnapped, I think you meant he’d been taken away from you. Stolen. Death steals the people we love.”
“But I never said he was kidnapped,” Louisa repeated. “My mother made that up. She makes everything up.”
Dr. Brickner answered with a contemplative expression. I believe you, he seemed to want his expression to say. Louisa gazed back at him unflinchingly, clothing him first in pity, then in contempt, and then in pity again, trying to decide which was best, as if he were a paper doll. There was nothing on his desk anymore to obstruct their calm view of each other, and Louisa wondered if he would notice, and thought that, if he did, she would find a new feeling to dress him in. She wasn’t sure she wanted to have to do this. She wasn’t sure if her suspense, as she waited, was eager or fearful. These two possibilities seemed to have opposite meanings but they felt the same way. Now Dr. Brickner took a pen from his jacket breast pocket and dropped his gaze from her face to a notepad. As he filled the pad with illegible writing, his face was serene. He seemed to have found what he needed. “Why don’t you play with the toys while I finish my notes,” he suggested as he wrote, but of course she could not move and didn’t. He didn’t repeat the suggestion.
When he had finished writing, he came around the desk again and said something about what a pleasure it had been to meet her. He put out his hand and she shook it without standing up. If he found this rude he didn’t let on. Then she followed him to his office door with her arms crossed behind her, and, after some more pleasantries with her aunt, he disappeared behind his door again and Louisa rode home in the car with her aunt and a dull pain where the hard metal stump of the flashlight, shoved into the back of her waistband, dug into her buttock.
Now she pulled the flashlight out from where she’d concealed it in the crack between her mattress and the headboard. Aimed at the ceiling, it made a frail jellyfish of light, pierced by the stripe from the door. Walking the beach at sunset, her father had always brought their flashlight, its weight and shape awkwardly housed in his slacks pocket. If she let go of his hand and ran ahead a bit before turning back, she’d see the flashlight tugging the waist of his slacks down on one side as he made his way toward her. He’d been particularly cautious, her father. Full of strange fears. He was so afraid that she would ingest a sharp object—some piece of glass or metal accidentally included in her food—that at restaurants he would poke through her dish with a fork before letting her eat it. In crosswalks, and even on sidewalks, he was afraid she’d be hit by a car, and even after she turned ten still held her tightly by the hand any time that they walked out in public. He feared the primal wildness of domesticated animals and would not let Louisa have a pet. And he must have feared darkness, too, always bringing that flashlight on their walks, despite how long the sunset’s afterglow lived in the sky, despite his never letting Louisa stay out late enough to see the first stars. Except for that very last night, when they finally went out on the breakwater, and went so far that it was actually dark before they got back to shore. They’d needed the flashlight to be sure of their footing on the slippery rocks, her father’s grip almost crushing her fingers. When the flashlight fell, it landed almost noiselessly in sand.
This fact—that the flashlight, in falling, had landed almost noiselessly in sand—rippled over her like the light rippling over the ceiling. It was not a memory, as Louisa understood memory: a fragmented, juddering filmstrip of image and sound. This wasn’t something but nothing, an absence where a presence was expected. There had been no clattering onto the rocks. There had been no splash in the water. The flashlight had fallen almost noiselessly into the sand.
Her father, it was understood, had slipped and fallen off the breakwater, and drowned. Louisa had been found unconscious on the shore. Her father, his body, had not been found at all. Currents explained Louisa’s father’s body’s disappearance. Shock explained Louisa’s transposition to the sand. All of it was sad. None of it was surprising. The flashlight had fallen almost noiselessly into the sand, but it was possible that Louisa had dropped it there herself; she might have obtained the flashlight from her slipping, falling, drowning father, walked the rest of the causeway of slippery rocks to the shore, and dropped the flashlight almost noiselessly herself.
What had happened to that flashlight? Of course it was gone. She had remembered it only now, holding this flashlight, gripping its warm metallic heft and aiming its faltering ray. She loved this flashlight and not just because she had stolen it from Dr. Brickner. It was a faithful object. It had been forgotten, without purpose, before she had snatched it away. She would have to get fresh batteries for it, but that would be easy; she would steal them from the rack at the checkout the next time she went to the store with her aunt.
Her door swung open and the spill of light from the hallway washed over the ceiling and drowned her jellyfish. “Louisa?” came her mother’s cracked voice. The wheelchair bumbled through the doorframe, banging and scraping in haste, and then her mother was on her, having somehow launched herself across the space between the wheelchair and the bed, confirming what Louisa kept saying: her mother didn’t need the chair; she was faking.
“Oh, Louisa, Louisa, oh, sweetie,” her mother was keening, drowning Louisa in touch as Louisa tried to thrash her away. Now her aunt was also busying into the scrum.
“What a sound! It’s like she’s being murdered!” her aunt cried. “It’s making my hair stand on end! Here’s milk—it should calm her right down.”
But she didn’t want milk or her mother’s hands on her. Why wouldn’t they let her alone? She kicked with everything she had and the flashlight fell out of her covers and crashed to the floor. It made such a bang that her mother and her aunt gasped and froze. Then her aunt saw the cause of the noise and picked it up from the floor.
“I can’t believe it,” her aunt said. “When the doctor called this evening and told me you’d taken his flashlight, I gave him a piece of my mind. You’ve made a liar out of me.”
Then they did let her alone, though she didn’t see which of them yanked the door shut, leaving her in darkness. ♦


newyorker--2020-08-31--Grace Wales Bonner’s Visions of Black Style

I wonder how they were dressed when they were put in the ground .
Trayvon and Breonna and George .
Each was born or mostly reared in the American South , an area defined as much by its powerful aesthetic as by its racial segregation , a place where people of color wear their culture on their backs , like a second skin , and a statement : This is a synthesis of all that is American , of all that we are and that you are , too .
This is how we do .
Given the importance of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the correctness of John Lewis ’ s suit as he was beaten in Alabama , or the fall of his coat as he and other freedom fighters were gassed in Tennessee , or the sharp brim of Martin Luther King , Jr. , ’ s hat when he was arrested for loitering in Alabama , created a distinct impression of unbendable self-possession in the midst of chaos , of moral rectitude in a sea of shit .
That is what made me wonder how Trayvon and Breonna and George ’ s families @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the ground .
In stateliness and blood ?
The same kind of stateliness that I see in Grace Wales Bonner ’ s clothes ?
The twenty-nine-year-old London-based designer—a slight woman with enormous intellectual and artistic ambitions—draws from the creative and thus political minds of the modern African diaspora , not only to inform her art but to reveal how style has grown out of the diaspora itself , linking together our fragmented worlds in ways that others may not have noticed , but that we have .
Equally at home with Aimé Césaire @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about Negritude as she is with the history of Christian Dior—last April , she worked with the fabled house to reinterpret its New Look—Wales Bonner has been sui generis from the start , in part because , unlike many other designers , she doesn ’ t reference the past to service trend ; in her work , she aims to make the broken history of the Black artist and intellectual in African , European , and American culture whole .
Wales Bonner has always been drawn to Black thinkers and creators whose relationship @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a passionate but uneasy one—including the abolitionist Ethiopian leader Haile Selassie I , the Caribbean poet Derek Walcott , the Brooklyn visual artist Jean-Michel Basquiat , the Chicago-based painter Kerry James Marshall , and the Harlem writer Langston Hughes .
These cultural forefathers have made explicit and implicit appearances in Wales Bonner ’ s designs , which are generally tailored to emphasize the dignity and the line of their wearers , through the dash of a jacket pocket , the lay of the lapels , the drape of a pants leg , or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ others .

I wonder how they were dressed when they were put in the ground. Trayvon and Breonna and George. Each was born or mostly reared in the American South, an area defined as much by its powerful aesthetic as by its racial segregation, a place where people of color wear their culture on their backs, like a second skin, and a statement: This is a synthesis of all that is American, of all that we are and that you are, too. This is how we do. Given the importance of self-presentation in that part of the world, the correctness of John Lewis’s suit as he was beaten in Alabama, or the fall of his coat as he and other freedom fighters were gassed in Tennessee, or the sharp brim of Martin Luther King, Jr.,’s hat when he was arrested for loitering in Alabama, created a distinct impression of unbendable self-possession in the midst of chaos, of moral rectitude in a sea of shit. That is what made me wonder how Trayvon and Breonna and George’s families dressed them before they were put in the ground. In stateliness and blood? The same kind of stateliness that I see in Grace Wales Bonner’s clothes?
The twenty-nine-year-old London-based designer—a slight woman with enormous intellectual and artistic ambitions—draws from the creative and thus political minds of the modern African diaspora, not only to inform her art but to reveal how style has grown out of the diaspora itself, linking together our fragmented worlds in ways that others may not have noticed, but that we have. Equally at home with Aimé Césaire and Léopold Sédar Senghor’s theories about Negritude as she is with the history of Christian Dior—last April, she worked with the fabled house to reinterpret its New Look—Wales Bonner has been sui generis from the start, in part because, unlike many other designers, she doesn’t reference the past to service trend; in her work, she aims to make the broken history of the Black artist and intellectual in African, European, and American culture whole. Wales Bonner has always been drawn to Black thinkers and creators whose relationship to the society that made them is a passionate but uneasy one—including the abolitionist Ethiopian leader Haile Selassie I, the Caribbean poet Derek Walcott, the Brooklyn visual artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, the Chicago-based painter Kerry James Marshall, and the Harlem writer Langston Hughes. These cultural forefathers have made explicit and implicit appearances in Wales Bonner’s designs, which are generally tailored to emphasize the dignity and the line of their wearers, through the dash of a jacket pocket, the lay of the lapels, the drape of a pants leg, or the interplay of each element with the others.