More on: social issues

TEN years ago in these pages I attempted to explain “Why I am a Conscientious Objector in the Culture Wars.” At that time, the dust had only recently settled on the public controversies over National Endowment for the Arts funding of works by Robert Mapplethorpe and Andres Serrano. In addition to the debate over public…

THE TASTE OF GRAPES was the taste south of his grandmother’s garage back home. Small as marbles, green and sour skinned—when you bit them, the skins spilt and squirted the globe of flesh into your mouth, smooth and soft; if there were any sweetness, this is where you would find it. He could not define…

This is the season of dried rushes and sodden leaf-matter in parks, when the lightly furred animal bodies of the people break out in sores and a mild but insistent contagion blooms in the chilly dampness. The lowered sun does not yet warm them, despite cerulean skies. The meat-headed race trundles along in groups, God…

Bus of marigolds. Caravan of peace. Appeals. Thousands of families divided blow kisses. Who is desperate to cross over. Who must see his father’s grave. Despite. And painted right across the bus, I broke the swords and made of them sickles, from one of their poets, who —you’ve heard this before, I’m sure— is also…

On an island in the disputed region of the Yellow Sea, blooms of smoke from the shelling of the garrison weave into one bloom, one force of nature so thick, they say, you cannot see your hands. The planet, we know, tilts on its axis like a man contemplating a problem, spun toward the horizon…

Going through the experience of Hurricane Katrina taught me to submit to and praise God. The message I got is that we are hopeless, but we still thanked God in the midst of it. Some people can’t fathom how to sing and praise him in the midst of Katrina. That is where I pulled all…