Alex Kudera's Blog, page 12

I would be as small as possible

"There weren't many choices for my birth mother, when she was pregnant with me, unmarried, in 1959, in that small town. She could have used a knitting needle or rat poison and tried to end it herself. She might have run away to an anonymous town where nobody knew her and passed herself off as a widow with a child. But that would have meant tearing herself away from her family, her community, and everything she knew. Instead, she bought a girdle. She ate like a bird. She did what she could do to ensure that I would be as small as possible."

~~ from I Would Meet You Anywhere in the World by Susan Kiyo Ito

Christmas 2024

Merry Christmas

She ate like a bird

"There weren't many choices for my birth mother, when she was pregnant with me, unmarried, in 1959, in that small town. She could have used a knitting needle or rat poison and tried to end it herself. She might have run away to an anonymous town where nobody knew her and passed herself off as a widow with a child. But that would have meant tearing herself away from her family, her community, and everything she knew. Instead, she bought a girdle. She ate like a bird. She did what she could do to ensure that I would be as small as possible."

~~ from I Would Meet You Anywhere in the World by Susan Kiyo Ito

a little tower of books

"I loved that she had a little tower of books next to her bed. My own parents were not readers, although they nurtured my love of books. They kept a subscription to Reader's Digest Condensed Books, which arrived once a month. I was the only one who actually read them."

~~ from I Would Meet You Anywhere in the World by Susan Kiyo Ito

by and by

Enjoy CAAMP's live performance of "By and By."

The Light Between Us

 

The copy I pre-ordered months ago resurfaces:  The Light Between Us by Elaine Chiew.

trigger warning

"I have never formally issued a 'trigger warning' or explicitly carved out a 'safe space.' But I know that all readers do not come to a text equally."

~~ from The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates

I Would Meet You Anywhere in the World

"I wouldn't have missed this for anything in the world."

~~ from I Would Meet You Anywhere in the World by Susan Kiyo Ito

a clean, well-lighted book

 

Bartleby and Benito