My First Teacher

 I stopped posting to this blog at the end of 2016.  You see, 2016 was very 2020ish for me.  Towards the end of that year, I lost several dear friends of mine to various illnesses-sickle cell anemia and leukemia among them.  The biggest, most shattering loss that I suffered that year came four days before Christmas, when my sister and I each held one of our mother's hands and watched her take her last breaths after we removed her from life support.  Three days earlier, she had suffered a massive heart attack which had stopped her heart several times, leaving her with irreparable brain damage.  My mother had suffered from various chronic illnesses since the time that I was five years old.  I was 38 when she died.  I had made it my mission in life to heal her, to find the next great natural remedy that would ease her pain and prolong her life.  But instead, I found myself sitting in front a doctor staring blankly as he told my sister and I that there was basically nothing else that could be done for her.  My mother had emphasized repeatedly that if anything happened to her, she didn't want to be kept alive on machines.  However, it's one thing to hear that from a living, breathing person who has literally been there since birth, and quite another to be faced with the harsh reality of saying, "ok, just give up, let her go".  

But let her go we did.  I think part of my heart stopped beating with hers.  In a dazed stupor, I made a simple post to my Facebook page:  "I just lost my first teacher.  Sleep well Mama, no more pain".  My mother was my first teacher.  She taught me to read before I ever set foot into a classroom, and she instilled the love of reading in me that inspired this blog.  She even bought one of the books that I reviewed after she read about it here, her quiet way of telling me that she liked my writing.  Like many adult women and their mothers, we didn't always have an easy relationship.  At times, I felt like she dismissed my writing as just a trivial pursuit.  So for her to hold that book up and say "remember this?  I read it on your blog"......well, you might as well have handed me a Pulitzer Prize and a MacArthur grant in the same day.  The teacher finally approved of the student.  

So in this year of change, of pandemic, of lockdown, of protest, I think it's time that I come out of hibernation and start writing seriously again.  It's time for the student to begin her assignments again.  It's time for my heart to beat again.  

Acclaimed Author Gloria Naylor Passes Away at 66

2016 has dealt us all some tough losses, and the literary world has not been immune to this.  Gloria Naylor, most famous for her critically acclaimed novel The Women of Brewster Place, passed away at the age of 66 near her home in Christiansted, St. Croix, U.S.V.I.  According to her niece, the cause of death was heart failure.

Her 1983 novel, The Women of Brewster Place, went on to win a National Book Award and became a widely hailed tv miniseries starring Oprah Winfrey and Lynn Whitfield.  Subsequent novels including Linden Hills, Bailey's Cafe, and The Men of Brewster Place, which examined the lives of the men in the original novel, earned her a firm place as a leading African American author.

Naylor earned a B.A. in English from Brooklyn College and a master's degree from Yale.  She taught at several prestigious institutions, including The University of Pennsylvania and New York University.  Her other awards included the National Endowment for the Arts and a Guggenheim Fellowship.  She leaves behind a sister, Bernice Harrison, a niece, and a nephew.

Hats off to another literary giant who has passed on.  Ms. Naylor may have left the physical world, but she lives on through her writing.