Category: Essays

A Christmas Carol: For White Authors Who Don’t Want to be Scrooge

ACT 1

The curtain opens on a darkened office. One lamp casts light onto the face of the White Author, who is sitting at a desk hunched over a laptop looking at Twitter. Whispers start. At first, the words are too faint to make out, but gradually occasional whispers become audible, making it clear that the White Author is reading comments about their recently published book. The word “racist” is heard with greater and greater frequency. The White Author straightens and starts typing frantically.

WHITE AUTHOR: What! How dare you say my book is racist! I’m not racist! You’re racist!

The White Author raises their hand, about to strike the “Enter” key angrily. Behind them, Ghost 1, a semi-transparent white man wearing a top hat and coat, materializes.

GHOST 1: Wait!

WHITE AUTHOR: (turning and lowering hand) Who are you?

GHOST 1: The Ghost of Racism Past.

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Childbirth and the christmas story

Picture of the Virgin Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus in the manger

As a child, I gave little thought to Mary’s birth experience in the Christmas story that I heard. She shows up on the donkey, beds down in the manger for the night, pops out the Savior, and shortly thereafter kneels in a neat and tidy manger scene wearing white without a hair out of place.

It was not until I gave birth to my own child that I came to appreciate the audacity that this telling of the Christmas story displays. In a holiday where childbirth is literally the main event, the actual labor and delivery is erased. After going through one of the better childbirth experiences myself – thirty-two hours of no sleep, waiting impatiently until the contractions finally became unspeakably painful so I could go to the hospital for actual labor, six hours of excruciating physical exertion, the usual amount of tearing and stitching, and the standard several weeks of postpartum bleeding – I had a few questions about the details of this story. 

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“he” and children’s literature

Cover of The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

It’s always a bit of a shock to realize that social problems I think I’ve overcome still have their hooks in deep. In my case, this realization came as I was at my in-laws’ house watching my mother-in-law teach my two-year-old son about pronouns. Pronouns are inherently tricky. Simply sorting out when to use “I” versus “you” is a monumental cognitive task, and the inevitable errors in the process are normally sources of amusement and amazement for me. This day’s pronoun errors – less so.

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EEM