Midweek Notes from a Practicing Writer
Three quick things.
1. Success! Remember the essay-in-progress that I’ve been mentioning lately? It found a home last week. Titled “The Un-Stunned,” it offers some personal reflections on the uptick in antisemitism here in the United States. (On the writing front, it also features a flashback to how I incorporated some similar thoughts in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks into fiction that I was writing at the time.)
2. New work-in-progress. At the day-long writing retreat I attended last week, I finally opened a new Word doc and put down (and saved!) some words that may, someday, be part of another nonfiction project, connected with a recent family reunion.
3. In the Heights. On Sunday I traveled (way) uptown to attend the latest Bloom Readers Series event in Washington Heights. I’d been meaning to check out this series for a while—that my friend Abigail Beshkin was one of Sunday’s readers was a big draw this go-round, and I was so glad the scheduling worked out. Loved the mix of writers, the host’s intros, and the setting.
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Congratulations on the essay and the new work begun!
Thank you!
Your thoughts in “Un-stunned,” are eloquent. I have often thought or felt Jews were particularly safe in the U.S. because the haters had so many other people to hate instead of us. Now I think this with less sureness. I also appreciate being introduced to a new Jewish site, the one publishing your essay.
Thanks so much. I sent the essay their way after catching this tweet: https://twitter.com/TCJewfolk/status/1214967526687416320
Congratulations! I fully agree with what you wrote. Maybe it’s an age thing?
Thanks, Tema. I, too, suspect that some of this is generational. I also hypothesize that chronological/generational closeness to the experience of seeking refuge in this country may have something to do with it—if you’re a younger American-born person whose parents and grandparents were all US-born, maybe that has something to do with experiencing a sense of shock now.