I had a bizarre and frustrating experience recently talking to an agent at a writing conference. My main interest was to pitch a novel, but when she said she wasn’t looking for fiction, I threw out a few nonfiction ideas, among them a book on what people don’t know about poverty. “What qualifies you to […]
illiteracy intelligence book-learning
Visioning Our Way to Justice
I grew up in poverty, the daughter of a tenant farmer. I thought people were privileged if they lived in a house, had running water or even an outhouse. My family of five lived in a ten-by-forty foot trailer. I knew that there were farm owners who lived in large houses, but they worked almost […]
Illiterate in 3 languages
At a meeting in Amman, Jordan, high-powered social policy analysts from many nations were deploring the limited intelligence of illiterates and the effects on their offspring; I rushed to defend illiterates. Then, I suddenly realized that my mother had been an illiterate. Indeed, I quickly recognized that Mom was illiterate in three languages. But she […]
