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.
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.