Page 158 - Demo
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                                    2465 Redefining Americathe porch with my 78-year-old grandmother, my children sandwiched between us on the swing, making idle talk and watching hummingbirds zip through the air beyond her screen as she tells us stories. Flush with joy.But there is more. Here is my local bookseller, a white middle-aged man, arranging a celebratory birthday dinner for my sister and hosting it even as he is convalescing from an illness, and doing it all with a quiet, gentle smile. Here is one of my best friends from high school, a white woman with two toddlers, who stops her car when she sees black people pulled over by the police, pulling out her phone and filming in an attempt to belay disaster, to hold authority accountable, fussy children be damned. And behold the Pass Christian Public Library leading an initiative to choose The Fire This Time, a book about black experience in America, for I breathe. I remain. I remember that Mississippi is not only its ugliness, its treachery, its willful ignorance. It is also my nephew, hurling his body down a waterslide, rocketing to the bottom, joy running from shoulder to heel. It is my godmother boiling pots and pots of shrimp and pouring them into a children%u2019s pool so we can eat the delicious spicy mess at our family gathering on the Fourth of July. It is my youngest sister smiling and dancing to Al Green in my godmother%u2019s driveway while the night enfolds like a hand and the insects hiss with summer%u2019s sibilant kiss. It is riding to a convenience store with my childhood friends with the windows down and the night wind caressing me on my cheekbones, UGK booming from the speakers in answer to the blooming Mississippi night. It is sitting on Emily KaskThis photograph of Ward on the front porch of her great-grandmother%u2019s home in Pass Christian, Mississippi, was part of a feature on National Public Radio titled %u201cWard Salvages Stories of the Silences.%u201dHow does the image encapsulate the values and reasons that drew Ward back to her home community? Be specific about the details and the composition of the photo.Copyright %u00a9 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.
                                
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