While I’m reading, a sentence will grab me and force me to stop. I pay tribute to other authors by sharing their Damn Fine Sentences with you. Then I recount a memory the words bring up for me. It’s about how books connect with your life.
******
“It took time for me to see that the story really was my greatest power.”
———Ta-Nehisi Coates
——--The Water Dancer
I tasted the bile rising, as I waited for the online author reading to begin. A national tech company had scheduled me for their black employee affinity group. What did I have to say to these thirty-somethings? And younger. My essays were the experiences of a seventy-something. To them a grandmother. A great-grandmother. They would tap their fingers, impatient at the deadlines clogging their inboxes. No, it wasn’t email that was clogged; it was Microsoft Teams, a platform? application? I hadn’t used before this occasion. I would embarrass myself into a cliché by not being able to work the technology.
One by one, they popped into squares, until a couple dozen populated my screen. Each clung to a dog-eared copy of Blindsided. A few clutched it to their hearts. Someone brought her hand to her chest and mouthed thank you. Another, sad-eyed, shook her head in slow motion. In every window, sticky notes fringed the edges my book.
******
“It took time for me to see that the story really was my greatest power.”
———Ta-Nehisi Coates
——--The Water Dancer
I tasted the bile rising, as I waited for the online author reading to begin. A national tech company had scheduled me for their black employee affinity group. What did I have to say to these thirty-somethings? And younger. My essays were the experiences of a seventy-something. To them a grandmother. A great-grandmother. They would tap their fingers, impatient at the deadlines clogging their inboxes. No, it wasn’t email that was clogged; it was Microsoft Teams, a platform? application? I hadn’t used before this occasion. I would embarrass myself into a cliché by not being able to work the technology.
One by one, they popped into squares, until a couple dozen populated my screen. Each clung to a dog-eared copy of Blindsided. A few clutched it to their hearts. Someone brought her hand to her chest and mouthed thank you. Another, sad-eyed, shook her head in slow motion. In every window, sticky notes fringed the edges my book.
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