Kennedy wrongly called autism a “preventable disease”, labeled it an epidemic like measles, and accused experts of being in “epidemic denial”. He then said: “Genes do not cause epidemics; it can provide a vulnerability, but you need an environmental toxin.”

multivariate environmental and social factors that contribute to well-being.

Their stance is more of a shrug and sigh than a battle cry. When Kennedy claims that autism is worse than Covid-19 because the latter only kills “old people” and “metabolically healthy” people don’t die from it, or when a Maha associate claims that measles is “an essential rite of passage, immunologically”

the desire to shape the population’s genetic makeup.

Kennedy champions living harmoniously with nature, free from the burdens of “poisonous” food additives, fertilizers, cooking oils and the most toxic chemistry of all: vaccines.

concept of soft eugenics: non-coercive methods of reducing certain conditions through individual choice and medical advice.

racial hierarchy, with white Europeans at the top.

animal breeding, Galton encouraged people with “desirable” traits to procreate while discouraging or preventing those with “undesirable” traits

the idea that if you take away life-saving services, then only the strong will survive

And it extended, of course, to what was happening in Black academia, what was happening in Black film.

Because any critic of anything needs to know something more than the last 25 years of their lives. They need to know everything you all have been talking about.

And hip-hop at that point blew up in the suburbs in a major way. But the thing was that notion of Black writing being essential to one’s understanding of the culture, where the culture was no longer the culture as we’d known it in ’70s, ’80s and ’90s.

The way he was able to bring his poetics into writing about music and left these indelible lines — these things, they’ve formed my own critical perspective, my own critical understanding of the way in which the opportunity to talk about the music is of course the opportunity to bring our whole lives to who we are.

African American autonomy in the American body politic is a multifaceted one tied to necessary and interlocking social, political as well as cultural revolutions in valuing Black life. Culture critics, we know, play a pivotal role in identifying and narrating the dimensions of that value.

Their work helped lead an intellectual revolution in writing and thinking about the importance of Black sound,

Frederick Douglass’s sharp observations about blackface minstrelsy to the barrier-breaking journalism of theater and music columnists like Pauline Hopkins, Sylvester Russell and Lester Walton in the late 19th and early 20th century.

that Black critics have been setting the record straight and engaging Black citizenry “in the making of its own story,”

he revolutionized the form and content of music journalism by centering Blackness as both the analytic framework to engage and experience popular music as well as the language to tell the story of the music itself in living color.

but there is something pernicious about Davis and all of those other white guys who want so badly to put white men in charge—American and European—and put Negroes in the background.

swing and blues as the enemy

The resentment flares if these Negroes have any power to define themselves and what they are doing or if they have reputations independent of Davis’ permission or if they cannot be conventionally condescended to from the abolitionist’s perspective that so many jazz writers have in common.

Piazza surely knew what he was talking about, especially since he was a white man who had been among these jazz writers when nobody dark was around, which allowed him to understand them and their various insecurities and their various resentments close up.

intense inferiority feelings in front of the musicians they write about.

This time white musicians who can play are too frequently elevated far beyond their abilities in order to allow white writers to make themselves feel more comfortable about being in the role of evaluating an art from which they feel substantially alienated

Duke Ellington was trying to get his buddies to call their art “Negro music,”

I am trying to keep myself free of the concern with detail, for apremature involvement with the details of language may keep me fromevaluating the questions of form.

Are there any tangents that can be cut/oose? I used to have much moretrouble geting rid of those wonderful pieces of evidence or examples ofwriting that really did not relate to the meaning.

Simplicity is best. This does not mean writing in pidgin English, merelysending a telegram to the reader.

The teacher who writes in public will expose the fact that writing oftendoes not come clear; in fact, s yntax often breaks down just at the pointwhere a new or significant meaning is beginning to break out of its shell.

Revision can be the most satisfying part of teaching composition if theteacher is willing to let go. The composition teacher must wean thestudent. The teacher must give the responsibility for the text to the writer,making clear again and again that it is the student, not the teacher, whodecides what the writing means.

When editors or teachers kidnap the first draft, they also remove theresponsibility for making meaning from the writer.

Each of these acts fits into asequence most of the time. The writer solves the problems of meaning,and those solutions make it possible to solve the problems of order, andthose solutions make it possible to solve the problems of voice.

The writer has to go back again and again and again to considerwhat the writing means and if the writer can accept, document, andcommunicate that meaning

it is discovering meaning andclarifying it while it is being discovered.

Meaning is usually discovered and clarified as the writermakes hundreds of small decisions, each one igniting a sequence ofconsideration and reconsideration.

目 —

an owl’s eyes

Eyedentity

conditions:They begin work at eight in the morning,They do not stop working until ten o'clock at night.They have a half-hour for dinner and a half-hour for supper.Thirteen hours a day--seventy-eight hours a week,Wages--$6.00 a week.They would "probably" be discharged if they refused to work overtime

“it is the substance of my books, not who is writing them, that is important”

Unlike my bold and daring mother and grandmother, who were not supportive of talking back, even though they were assertive and powerful in their speech, bell hooks as I discovered, claimed, and invented her was my ally, my support. That initial act of talking back outside the home was empowering

I claimed this legacy of defiance, of will, of courage, affirming my link to female ancestors who were bold and daring in their speech.

can recall the surprised look, the mocking tones that informed me I must be kin to bell hooks – a sharp-tongued woman, a woman who spoke her mind, a woman who was not afraid to talk back.

‘talked back’ to a grown person.

a family name (mother to Sarah Oldham, grandmother to Rosa Bell Oldham, great-grandmother to me), was to construct a writer-identity that would challenge and subdue all impulses leading me away from speech into silence.

She writes short, anecdotal, sometimes dialogic essays in academic and popular journals, that aim to appeal “to a popular and a professionalized readership to become responsible members of a common intellectual community”

a “widely published black feminist” writer

but I vividly recall every detail of how that sandwich was “customized” for me.

In hindsight, it was a turning point of my attitude toward challenges, big or small, in my new life, as if procuring a proper first meal signified my will to survive in this new world I’d entered. That significance would only become obvious to me many years later.

“On what bread?” The way she asked her next question made me feel she was now anticipating drawing another blank from me.

The woman delivered another long list but this time, both the smile and the happy tone had disappeared. Her face turned expressionless, but I could almost hear her annoyance.

Despite growing up in a big city, I was (and still am) horrible with directions. Any destination that required more than a few turns never failed to confuse me on the return route.

the cafeteria is closed until classes start, which is one week from today.”

I pushed open the heavy double door and stepped out of Selleck quadrangle, the graduate housing at University of Nebraska - Lincoln. The frigid January air entered my nostrils and instantly froze the hair inside. What a strange sensation!

We look at the italicized home movie for a while, then her memories, then the movie, and so on, letting one strand surface while the other is momentarily submerged.

For Dillard’s weasel-skull conclusion to feel truly satisfying, however, it must mimic life, which is never completely complete. In real life, there is always an “and then,” even if it comes after we have died. So the best conclusions open up a bit at the end, suggesting the presence of the future.

Writer’s block is not their problem since their minds overflow with remembered experiences and related ideas. While a fiction writer may need to invent from scratch, adding and adding, the essayist usually needs to do the opposite, deleting and deleting. As a result, nonfiction creativity is best demonstrated by what has been left out. The essay is a figure locked in a too-large-lump of personal experience, and the good essayist chisels away all unnecessary material.

Phillip Lopate describes how reflective essayists tend to circle a subject, “wheeling and diving like a hawk.” Unlike academic scholars, they don’t begin <img decoding="async" style="float: right;" 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" alt="">with a thesis and aim, arrow-like, at a pre-determined bull’s-eye.

One interesting side note: trauma, which is a common source for personal essays, can easily cause an author to get stuck on the sort of plateau Kittredge described. Jo Ann Beard, while clearly wrestling with the immobilizing impact of her own trauma, found a way to keep the reader moving both forward and upward, until the rising tension reached its inevitable climax: the graduate student firing his gun.

If she flatlines on an emotional plateau, not raising the tension, then we are likely to lose interest and walk away.

Savvy essayists, as a result, twist their chronology, beginning at the end or breaking to a moment in the past, even weaving together several timelines. More crucial, though, is their use of tension, which changes the flat line of chronology into a rising line—a plot. Such tension forces the reader into a climb, muscles contracting. It raises anticipation. Will we reach the top? And what will we see from there?

No diagram matches the exact form that evolves, and that is because the best essayists resist predictable approaches. They refuse to limit themselves to generic forms, which, like mannequins, can be tricked out in personal clothing. Nevertheless, recognizing a few basic underlying structures may help an essay writer invent a more personal, more unique form. Here, then, are several main options.

By trying a different angle or creating a composite of past approaches, you get closer and closer to what you intend. You begin to delineate the organic form that will match your content.

Although I may start an essay with a notion of where I am headed, inevitably I veer away as I get new ideas or encounter dead ends. Sometimes I even seem to go backward, losing all direction.

Try considering, on the page, why you deem certain material important or where you and your narrative are without those facts. Tell the story of your research—its rewards, twists and turns, and dead ends. Write about the acts of myth-making and myth-uncovering. Write about what you don’t know.

The absence of these items is a conflict, and without conflict, there’s no plot. And so the story of not knowing becomes the story.

Aldrich had some of what she calls her friend’s “nonmementos”—spoons, an egg coddler, letters. But he had destroyed personal photos, official documents, and the like. And so, in her larger narrative, she embraces the fact of those losses and what they might have told her.

Documents may have been destroyed or lost. Medical and legal records can require permissions an author simply can’t obtain. What we’re left with is something like an old-fashioned game of telephone, where one whisper builds on another until the original meaning is gone. And as we write, we’re stymied, trying to find facts in those diminishing whispers.

Writing a true story, we want to track down the truths, both objective and subjective, using documents, photos, and interviews to corroborate our story. But sometimes, family members are dead or otherwise unavailable to us.

The workshop student said there were no letters, no documents, and no one living who knew the story for certain. Did it happen? she worried.

We write, I imagine. Or, I believed. We write, She told me, because the fact is that she did, and the truth conveyed to us is hers (whoever she may be).

There are practicalities to think of, too. In the summertime, a light cotton wrap keeps yourhair up and your neck cool. In the winter, a thick one relieves you of the need for a winterhat, which can wreak havoc on natural hair.

Once you master some layering, twisting andtucking techniques, every outfit becomes more interesting. Tying a wrap becomes aneveryday celebration of Blackness.

One Black woman who trained me instructed me to wear my hair longand straight. Later, working at nonprofits, I noticed that most of the Black femaleexecutives straightened their hair. Wherever I worked, I received messages — if not in somany words — to play down my Blackness and Africanness.

In Italy, I was one of a few Black students at my school, and my coiled hairmade me stand out even more than I already did. So, in middle school, I relaxed it. Atfirst, I was pleased with my straight hair.

I longed for that kindof freedom — from the blow dryers and curling irons I used to keep my hair straight andlong; from the daily battle with my damaged, brittle hair that now stuck to my sweatyneck. I fantasized about chopping it all off and growing a lush Afro

When my grandmother is overdue for a visit from thehair braider, she gossips with guests wearing soft cotton wraps in bright colors, knottedsimply at the nape of her neck.

While my female cousins and I leftour heads uncovered, my aunties wore glossy black head wraps, tied in small bows at thecenter of their hairlines.

In our tradition, fabric patterns have distinctmeanings, and ours was printed with a symbol that resembles chain links, representingthe unbreakable bonds between the living and the dead.