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We named him Lincoln. While the other girls wrote about princesses and high school Queen Bees, Emily* wrote about Harriet Tubman. Her first piece in the week-long creative writing workshop began as an academic essay, but ended up being creative non-fiction. The piece, originally titled “Cold, Dark, and Dirty,” opened in one of the slave ships of yore, eventually transitioning to the wide, open cotton plantations of Maryland, then onto the trials of slavery, and lastly to our heroine, Harriet Tubman, and her plight. Tubman wasn't just a textbook character; in Emily's piece, Tubman became human. Emily detailed everything from Tubman's potato sack bed to her meals of her master's leftovers to her longing to free her parents from slavery. Our setting was a church basement in Northwest Washington, D.C. Children from across the metropolitan area come to this parish for lessons in penning fiction, poetry, plays, songs, and graphic novels. They read their finished pieces at local bookstores, enter national competitions, and even have their work published in print and online children's literary journals. The writers range from ages 8 to 18 and all of the instructors are published authors or produced playwrights. The instructors are contractors, teaching one to two workshops a week and spending the rest of their time engrossed in their artistic and professional projects. The children learn from teaching artists in an environment free of judgment and censorship. Unlike in school, there are no prompts, no grades, and no hard deadlines, though the children are placed in workshops by age group, much like in a traditional classroom. Emily was white and hailed from Chevy Chase, Maryland, one of the richest towns in America, and had just completed third grade. Her background was very similar to that of the other children in my workshop. The difference was her content. In between working on her Harriet Tubman piece, Emily started a short story set in the Jim Crow South. Her protagonist is a white girl much like herself who decides to go against convention and befriend a black girl. I sat by Emily as she dictated her story, typing furiously to keep up with her fast thoughts. When she took a breath, I asked her questions to encourage her to clarify and elaborate. At some point while describing the black children's classroom, Emily broke from her narration and stared directly at me. “Did you know that black people couldn't do the same stuff as white people back then?” She furrowed her little brow, looking sincerely distressed. I nodded and said, “Yeah, that was a horrible time in American history. And, you know, some people are still mean like that today. There might not be the same laws, but some people are mean, anyway.” Emily dropped her gaze and mumbled, “I know. It's not fair that some people are so mean.” Then she told me that that's why she wanted to be a civil rights activist when she grew up. I told her that was one of the best jobs I could imagine. Later on in the week, Emily wanted to work on an essay about how she first learned about Martin Luther King, Jr. in kindergarden, which seemed in line with everything she had written thus far. But her next idea surprised me: “I want to write about how I got my puppy.” “OK, sure.” It was certainly a more typical piece for someone her age. Then her little face broke out into a grin. “We named him Lincoln, you know, after Abraham Lincoln. My dad wanted to call him Gandhi, but my brother and I liked Lincoln better.” Aha. *Name has been changed for the sake of privacy. #Real #CivilRightsActivist #HarrietTubman #TeachingArtists #ChildrensEducation #CreativeWritingForKids Visit our shop and subscribe. Sponsor us. Submit and become a contributor. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Solving Riddles with a Smart Phone If I asked, I’m sure you could pull a few facts about Sherlock Holmes from the depths of your memory. He’s a detective. He has a friend named Dr. Watson. He plays the violin and he lives in London. There’s a whole bunch of stories written about him. You probably had to read at least one for school at some point.
The resurgence of the fictional detective’s popularity in the last five years is down to the multiple new adaptations of the source material. Warner Bros got the ball rolling in 2009 with the film Sherlock Holmes directed by Guy Ritchie and starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law. In 2010, the BBC launched a miniseries that ensnared the entire world’s affections called simply Sherlock, bringing the famous consulting detective into the 21stcentury. And then in 2011, the Warner Bros sequel Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows hit theaters. And then in 2012, NBC debuted their own modern Holmes with Elementary. The third film of the Downey Jr. franchise has been announced. At the moment, there’s money at 221b Baker Street. What is it about this fictional detective that captivates audiences so much, for so long? Arthur Conan Doyle published the first Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet, in 1887, and since then, Sherlock Holmes has become a part of our collective cultural lexicon. There’s a reason we say “No shit, Sherlock,” after all. But the Sherlock Holmes star burns brighter in the 21st century than it has since the 1980s. Why? Perhaps it’s because of the mythology that surrounds the man. Sure, everybody likes an emotionally stunted anti-hero, but that can only entertain the public in one iteration for so long. But if you wrap an enough trappings, everyone will find something to latch on to, something that speaks to them. The Ritchie films are action movies—far less cerebral or intellectual than the original stories – but they deliver a stunning visual of the Victorian aesthetic. Accuracy be damned, this is what comes to mind when someone says, “Victorian England.” Industrial London is dirty and polluted, which gives everybody a good excuse to make more of the “dark, gritty” movies that are in vogue right now. But surely there is something more to this fixation than dark and grit. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The Four Commandments of Socially Adept TextingWhen cell phones became available to the masses, it was very, very good. Behind a screen, there are no awkward silences, no nervous stammerings, and the ability to craft your responses with care. The IRL world doesn't offer us this kind of convenience. There’s also the absence of the non-verbal communication that conveys nuanced-but-crucial meanings in our offline interactive experiences. You’d think that people would use this to their advantage, especially when contacting individuals of romantic or sexual interest. After all, making a good impression via text should be that easy, right?
This is why I have no idea what the hell happens to some people when they have a screen in front of them instead of a person’s face. I'm not talking people who struggle with spelling, grammar, tech fluency, and all of the other things that encompass expressing oneself in text. I'm talking about people who struggle with being respectful towards others. I recently ran into the Straight White Boys Texting Tumblr and quickly became intrigued by how not shocked I was. I felt like some super secret agent accessed the complete text history of my life, made a “best of” compilation, and published it on the Internet for the world to marvel at. If this is what “straight white boys” text like, then I can say with utmost certainty that all races text like white boys. Racist notions aside, the messages sounded all too familiar. Loads of incriminating evidence and life experience clearly indicates that certain individuals struggle with not sounding like morons while having text message conversations with people they’re attracted to. I’ve definitely seen it happen more frequently (read: far more shamelessly) in hetero-gendered interactions, these people forget that the anonymity offered by the computer/phone is fleeting. In the end, their depraved words will still be traced back to them. If the recipient is someone with whom they hope to eventually reunite at a later date, their words will be taken at face value. Literally. And it's not pretty. Of course, naysayers said the exposé unfairly targets heterosexual white men. I can certainly see how the title detracts from the epidemic of sending obnoxious, lewd, graphic, and socially inept messages to potential dates or sexytime partners. Like I said, a lot of people pull this stupid crap without considering just how repulsively inept that they sound. I've traveled far and wide on the Internet, interacting with people of all genders and orientations. In real life, I'm a sociable person and I also tend to attract quite a bit of "ooh-la-la" attention from a pretty diverse group of people. After asking everyone around me and examining my experiences, everyone agrees that men perpetrate SWB texting habits far more than women. I'm not saying that I haven't been harassed by women with unwanted dirty talk and naked selfies, but that amount absolutely pales in comparison to the number of men I've casually met outside the Internet, people with whom I've interacted face-to-face. In a matter of a few texts, they let themselves go in the worst way possible. Don't even get me started with people on the Internet who I didn't meet on any risque niche site. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
That Smokehouse Growl By Amy Joyce QuailBellMagazine.com Sometimes one can really lose their sense of self in a relationship. It all happens under the guise of love, I suppose, platonic or otherwise. I’m a people-pleaser and a nurturer, and I feel immense guilt whenever I say “no,” if I can even bring myself to do so. “Whatever you want” is my constant refrain. And most of the time, I’m genuinely pleased to carry out whatever particular want is in question. I like making other people happy, and I’ve always been that way. But after a certain point, it’s an obvious character flaw, and this “Like me, love me, please!” attitude ultimately came to define a completely awful, toxic, and thankfully ended relationship.
When I finally gathered the courage to end things with this person, an absolute surge of self-rediscovery flooded through me for months afterward: I found that I don’t like Indian food, I never have, and I doubt I’ll ever develop a taste for it now. I have a serious distaste for most kinds of anime, and I’ll never consider hiking an enjoyable pastime. And there are certain things I simply won’t tolerate in a relationship anymore, like my mental wellness being ignored and physical safety constantly being put at risk by someone who claims to ostensibly love me. I can’t pinpoint the exact time that it occurred during those turbulent eight years, but as a random purchase at Best Buy, the music of Tom Waits is something I just happened upon. So different were the gravelly ballads on The Heart of Saturday Night than what was given to me on mix CDs given to me by this person. His wicked whimsy began to serve as a beacon for when I stupidly cared more about another person than I did myself, particularly someone who certainly didn’t deserve it. Every once in a while, I’ll hear songs on the radio that were on these mix CDs. This particular music consisted of various genres that were never really to my taste and, ironically, love songs. Now I’ve come to see the CDs for what they really were: perfectly-timed peace offerings between the thinly veiled comments about whether or not I really should be eating that; the expectations that their plans always came first, regardless of what we’d previously decided or what I was comfortable doing; and the constant, underlying fear that I’d be pushed up against a wall during an argument again, with a grip that would leave bruises on my upper arms and me shaking for hours afterwards. Like how certain scents can trigger powerful memories, this music will do the same. Inevitably, the radio station will change with a sharp jab to the station presets and a derisive snort, and I’m usually able to go on about my day as though nothing happened. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Gypsy's First CaravanMy grandmother is a Gypsy but neither of us had ever been inside a caravan. There is a history-rich reason for this, appropriate for Roma & Traveller History Month, but I will get to that later. This status changed for me when my husband and I went back to Europe to visit friends and family, and enjoy the most gorgeous and love-filled wedding we’ve ever been to. One of the options for accommodation at our dear friends’ wonder-wedding was The Gypsy Retreat: two caravans, one for sleeping and one for living quarters, originally owned by a Romani family in Britain, restored and moved to the island that hosted the wedding. My friend, the beautiful genius bride, emailed me right away and asked if we wanted her to dog-ear the site for us. YES, PLEASE, YES. Photos courtesy of Jessica Reidy. Gallery follows story. Without doing any research whatsoever, I imagined a bow-top wooden vardo (caravan), typical of the Romanichal clan so wide-spread in Britain. I wondered how it might compare to my ancestors’ vardo. I racked my brain, trying to remember if we had any pictures of my grandmother’s ancestors’ homes. I remembered her telling me that, long before WWII, when her ancestors were nomadic, they travelled up and down the Danube from Germany to Hungary and back again with the seasons. I always thought they travelled by barges, since she called them “river Gypsies,” but maybe not. The women in her family happened to be very pretty, so many were successful dancers. Some told fortunes too, but fortune telling is a trade of desperation, a kind of casual therapy that Roma perform for gadjé (non-Roma) for money in hard times, and not some mystical ritual that we really believe in. Some of the women were advisors, a kind of healer, and that trade based on a very spiritual magic but it’s only for other Roma. My childhood memory is swirly at best and these details are from her childhood memory, too, from stories she heard set before she was born. And the stories were far and few between. She doesn’t remember what the men did—she thinks some must have been musicians since the women were dancers, but she remembers no music during the war. She was born in Germany, 1936, into one of the most horrific genocides the Romani people have suffered. The Nazis persecuted the Romani people alongside the Jews, the LGBTQ community, the mentally ill, communists, Catholics, and others. Half of Europe’s Gypsies were murdered and there was nowhere left to run.
I love Europe, but I admit, when I go back, I’m often enraged. America is bad enough with its Romani racial profiling, cultural appropriation, history of slavery, shockingly current forced sterilizations, and removing Romani kids from their parents and sticking them in orphanages where their culture is beaten out of them. But Europe makes Gypsy-hating a public blood-sport. I see “Kill Roma” scrawled on the wall of public toilets and “No Roma” in shop windows. People who know my heritage still don’t think twice about telling me that they hate Travellers, another nomadic ethnic group separate from Roma with their roots in Ireland who suffer the same stigma and oppression as Roma. Even though I don’t dress traditionally or talk much about my heritage in Europe, I feel unsafe. Even though my DNA is more Caucasian than Romani, in Europe people scream “Darky!” at me in the street, or “Pocahontas! You’re the last of the Mohicans! Be my Mohican bride!” Or, “I want to fuck you, little Indian girl.” Sometimes they get it right and say, “Go to hell, gyppo.” Depends on the racist. When this happens, sometimes well-meaning people “reassure” me: “Don’t worry, you don’t look Indian,” or “Don’t worry, you look white to me!” They don’t realize how hurtful and discriminatory it is to say such a thing. I’m OK with how I look. My ethnicity and appearance is not the problem, here, and damn, it shouldn’t matter. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The Relationship Anarchist CookbookThere’s a can of peanut butter in the cabinet. It’s great and all, but what I also love is hummus. My love for hummus doesn’t negate my love for peanut butter, nor does it temper my insufferable lust for Nutella. The relationships that I have with each of these foods are mostly separate, although peanut butter and Nutella come together on my sandwiches while hummus is only related by virtue of being a consumable, protein-packed, tasty food. All of us might have the good fortune of uniting at mealtime, and when we do, there isn’t any hostility. I normally don’t mistake one for the other (unless it’s a matter of proximity and I dunk my bread into the wrong container) because I know that each of these foods has a unique taste, one that derives from the ingredients that constitute their wholeness.
That is why ripping the label off of a Nutella jar and sticking it on the peanut butter jar won’t change its contents. Even though the jar has the “Nutella” label on it, it’s still peanut butter. Heaven knows that unless I become uber-successful at alchemy, the chances of either jar transforming into hummus are zilch; even with a label swap, what’s inside the jar will still be what I eat. Also, the combined flavors of certain foods (like Nutella and peanut butter) may be divine, while others might not taste so great if they're blended together. Then again, it depends on what your taste buds make of it. This metaphor only begins to explain why labeling relationships confuses the hell out of me. I am a relationship anarchist. In other words, I don’t conform my relationships to the cultural scripts, expectations, or norms that are considered “default” settings by society. I believe that relationships should be founded upon respect and the shared desires of all parties involved. I believe that honesty, consent, and communication are the pillars of any successful relationship, be it monogamous or otherwise. When combined, these three qualities can create to a skeleton key to the heart so that we can open up to our true desires. By attuning to those desires, we can pursue the mutual pleasure that a relationship has to offer so long that everyone involved is not only satisfied, but genuinely happy. Each relationship is unique and varies in intimacy. For instance, you Quail Bell Fledglings and I have a relationship; we’re currently affiliated because you’re reading my words. If a stranger and I walk past each other on the street, we are very loosely affiliated because we’re both on the same street. Granted, our relationship is not intimate at all and the most intimate that it would ever get would be a polite smile of acknowledgement. Since that street would probably be on Long Island, even that polite smile is a far stretch from what would actually happen. (Spoiler: Nothing except maybe a downward glance or a slight glare. Smiling? How suspicious… ) The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
An Awful Job or an Awful World?I consider myself very lucky to have never had a truly shitty job. Many of my friends have horror stories from the trenches of customer service and the restaurant industry, of being screamed at and groped by asshole customers, and then not even getting tipped. I am relieved to say my employment history is much more boring than any of that.
But I did have a job that showed me how shitty the world can be. My own privilege was placed squarely in front of me, and I confirmed that privilege when I left. My job wasn’t so bad, but the systems around it were, and they were systems I willingly took part in. Systems I still participate in today. My freshman year of college I was struggling to find a work-study job, so I applied to the America Reads and Counts program at NYU. This program places college students in public schools around the city to tutor kids in reading and math. I was placed in a K-12 school not far from where I lived in Manhattan. The school assigned me to a kindergarten class, and I was not happy when I learned about it. I am not great with very young children. I relate better to teenagers, whose lower energy levels and longer attention span I very much appreciate. So I walked into the kindergarten classroom on the first day with every muscle clenched, bracing myself for a wave of anxiety. The kids were adorable. I’ve never been so surprised at a thought popping into my head. They were bright and funny too, as I learned over time, devouring every new piece of information they came across. My favorite student was an earnest little boy with a faux hawk who memorized every book he read and asked for definitions of each new word he encountered. Most of my students were Puerto Rican or Dominican, and could read not only in English, but in Spanish as well. The shitty part about working with kids? I was in a daze the whole time I was employed. Their classroom was a biohazard. On one of my first days I helped a little girl zip up her coat. She sneezed on my face. I was so disgusted I was rendered speechless. I was sick for two months after that, possibly with mono, though the doctor I went to said it was just a cold. I didn’t get better until I went home for spring break and escaped the classroom for ten days. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Cardboard Bad AsseryBy Zack Budryk QuailBellMagazine.com “The fallacy in Hollywood is that if you’re making a ‘feminist’ story, the woman kicks ass and wins. That’s not feminist, that’s macho. A movie about a weak, vulnerable woman can be feminist if it shows a real person that we can empathize with.” -Natalie Portman The proper way to represent female characters in fiction has been a source of debate for a long time, especially because the alternative is to give more women authors, screenwriters and directors a shot. After centuries of female characters mostly being restricted to mothers, helpless princesses or temptresses, a backlash to this kind of narrative passivity began in the 20th century, with characters like Wonder Woman, Princess Leia and Buffy Summers turning long-established tropes on their head by presenting women who kicked ass themselves rather than waiting for a man to rescue them, marry them and discourage them from working outside the home.
The problem, however, is that since those characters popularized the Strong Female Character as an archetype, popular culture has largely gotten the idea that kicking ass is all a good female character requires; that a spinkick is a personality trait. “Part of the patronising promise of the Strong Female Character is that she’s anomalous,” wrote Sophia McDougall in her brilliant essay “I Hate Strong Female Characters.” “’Don’t worry!’ that puff piece or interview is saying when it boasts the hero’s love interest is an SFC. ‘Of course, normal women are weak and boring and can’t do anything worthwhile. But this one is different. She is strong! See, she roundhouses people in the face.’” Beyond that, such a rigid definition of strength severely limits female characters in, ironically, much the same way as the domestic stereotypes it was in response to. I discussed this idea with a friend of mine at work the other day. “It seems like that basically defines strength as stuff we associate with men,” she said. And this is perfectly true; the worst-case scenario for the SFC is basically the Disney Princess as Gillian Flynn’s Cool Girl. That’s why I think some of the best female characters out there today are not the ones who beat up a roomful of mooks without batting an eyelash, but rather, the ones who are capable of kicking ass as effectively as so many real-life women, while retaining all the personality facets, vulnerabilities and flaws that those same real women have (and, it should be noted, more male characters than I can name are allowed to have). The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Girl Power at Community Publications“You must always remember that your career path is for you to set. It’s not something that happens to you; it’s not something that others draw for you. When you encounter a brick wall, rather than stand there and curse at it, make a right turn and explore some other avenues.” —Pam Luecke, Reynolds Professor of Business Journalism at Washington & Lee University, quoted in The Edge of Change: Women in the Twenty-first Century Press The snug lobbies with floor tiles the color of old scallop shells. The murky tanks brimming with lethargic lobsters. The clattering of dishes and the aroma of mysterious spices. These are snippets of the early memories I have from dining out in D.C. and New York Chinatowns with my family growing up. But there were also the Asian-American newspapers scattered on countertops or crammed into wire racks, an afterthought in places ruled by food. As a little one, I would often pick up these publications and study the photos or trace the Chinese characters with one of the pens my mother always kept in her purse.
As I grew older, I continued to seek out whatever print material I could find beyond library walls. While carrying a book with me wherever I went became a habit, community and metro newspapers, 'zines, and literary journals possessed a different kind of magic: Someone who had not yet catapulted to literary stardom—to borrow my former professor Winnie Chan's phrase—or someone who wanted to engage with the community as a public service, had produced this quarter-pound of paper in my hands. Many of these “someones” were women, a pleasant deviation from the authors dominating my school reading lists. In scouring local mastheads as a young, impressionable writer, I took note of all the women's names. I was looking for hope in female role models. Because, unlike national publications, I saw that smaller, more localized ones populate their mastheads with female talent. These publications may still be imperfect in how they treat female employees, but they should be credited for having a higher percentage of women writers and editors than their national counterparts. They should be credited for inspiring young girls to consider a career in publishing and journalism. My observation that women abound at local publications cannot be purely anecdotal. As a starry-eyed teenager, I got my start as a writer at community publications in the D.C. metro area, Grinnell, Iowa, and Richmond, Virginia. I always reported to female supervisors and was surrounded by female writers and editors. It wasn't until I interned at my first national publication that I found myself overwhelmingly outnumbered. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Saving Soles and SoulsBy Brainy Bird QuailBellMagazine.com Sneakers, pumps, sandals—that's how the New York-based nonprofit Cherished Feet has been delivering hope for the past four years: through footwear. Over the past four years, they've distributed shoes to more than 20,000 homeless families in the United States and beyond. Why? Because soil-transmitted parasites are a reality. Give people shoes, protect their soles, and educate them about why wearing shoes is important. It's not just about having a passion for fashion. It's about having a passion for others. #Real #Shoes #HelpingTheHomeless #HomelessFamilies #HomelessShelters #NYCNonprofit #Charities #CherishedFeet Visit our shop and subscribe. Sponsor us. Submit and become a contributor. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
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Greater than the PlateIn fictional media, the act of eating and dining with others is one of the most commonly used elements that is used to represent something greater. Usually, eating is used to show a form of comfort a character regularly enjoys, while overeating can represent how wasteful or gluttonous a person is. Scenes of characters eating a meal together also are used in dichotomous ways, such as to show how close the characters are, or to underline tension running among the characters that is highlighted by forcing them all in close quarters.
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover is a film that is spends about 90% of its running time in a restaurant, moving from the dining room to the kitchen to the bathrooms to the parking lot outside. Directed by Peter Greenaway, the 1989 film uses the massive set that is the Le Hollandais restaurant to center the action of the film. The restaurant is owned by British gangster Albert Spica (Michael Gambon), a nouveau riche psychopath, who dines at Le Hollandais nightly with his beautiful but troubled wife Georgina (Helen Mirren) and his gang members. At Le Hollandais, Georgina continues an affair with a quiet bookkeeper named Michael (Alan Howard) who also dines there nightly. Their affair is aided by head chef Richard Borst (Richard Bohringer), who loathes Albert but has to accept the gangster's repeated revenue. What's fascinating about this film is that Le Hollandais comes to encompass nearly the entire world these characters live in. There's brief moments where they move outside of the restaurant (to Michael's book depository, to a hospital, and to a regular street), but nearly the entire film is capsuled inside the restaurant. Because of this, the restaurant begins to take a life of its own, aided by the film's incredible art direction. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
5 Sexist Medieval Warnings About Birthing |
Your voice is the whisper that grips the world by its crooked axis and propels it into the stars so that earthen life may witness the perfect frays of the universe being stitched into the whole of creation. Your voice colors the rainbow that mends the great schism between Heaven and Earth with a piercing brilliance that surpasses the sun, punctures clouds, and enlightens all with love. Your voice is the prayer that liberates the bird from its cage so that its solitary serenade of true freedom can echo all throughout the cavernous throat of God, whose blood is peopled with the heirs of tomorrow whose hearts shall pace the morning’s pulse. Your voice is pure poetry. |
#Imaginative #Nostalgic #Tribute #MayaAngelou #Poetry #Gallery #Poet #Writing #Creativity #Books #FemaleWriters
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Drama, Comedy, and Heart Uncaged
Of the original Netflix shows, Orange is the New Black is the one that probably has had the most influence and cultural impact. Created by Jenji Kohan of Weeds fame, the show followed thirty-something yuppie Piper Chapman (Taylor Shilling) as a past crime catches up with her and lands her in Litchfield Women's Penitentiary for fifteen months. The series follows Piper as she begins to adjust to the new environment. Her upbringing clashes with the prisoners, and forces her to reexamine herself and figure out who she is.
The first season, released on July 11, 2013, quickly attracted the attention of Netflix subscribers. Through the character of Piper and the other female prisoners in Litchfield, the show revealed a wide variety of stories, many of which rarely appear on television. This was a show about women, and told stories of women from every race, orientation, economic background, and so on. This was a show that represented all the women who generally wouldn't get their stories told, and this resonated with audiences, winning a People's Choice Award and a GLAAD Media Award.
As a result, there was plenty of anticipation in store for the second season of the series. Released on June 6, 2014, Orange is the New Black's second season continued the trend of the first season while expanding on greater issues within the prison system and allowing more character to get their time in the spotlight.
In the first season, each episode featured flashbacks for one character or one pair of characters, detailing how certain events and choices they made in life would land them in prison. While not every flashback episode showed how these women landed in prison, they did allow for more insight into the character. This helped add dimension to characters like prison grouch Miss Claudette (Michelle Hurst), Russian cafeteria chef and mobster Red (Kate Mulgrew), and transgender inmate Sophia (Laverne Cox). Because of this format, the viewer got to see that these characters were more than their archetypes would suggest and became a lot more human as a result.
The first season, released on July 11, 2013, quickly attracted the attention of Netflix subscribers. Through the character of Piper and the other female prisoners in Litchfield, the show revealed a wide variety of stories, many of which rarely appear on television. This was a show about women, and told stories of women from every race, orientation, economic background, and so on. This was a show that represented all the women who generally wouldn't get their stories told, and this resonated with audiences, winning a People's Choice Award and a GLAAD Media Award.
As a result, there was plenty of anticipation in store for the second season of the series. Released on June 6, 2014, Orange is the New Black's second season continued the trend of the first season while expanding on greater issues within the prison system and allowing more character to get their time in the spotlight.
In the first season, each episode featured flashbacks for one character or one pair of characters, detailing how certain events and choices they made in life would land them in prison. While not every flashback episode showed how these women landed in prison, they did allow for more insight into the character. This helped add dimension to characters like prison grouch Miss Claudette (Michelle Hurst), Russian cafeteria chef and mobster Red (Kate Mulgrew), and transgender inmate Sophia (Laverne Cox). Because of this format, the viewer got to see that these characters were more than their archetypes would suggest and became a lot more human as a result.
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To Daddies, Dads, Fathers, Sirs, and Papa Bears!
By The Quail Bell Crew
QuailBellMagazine.com
QuailBellMagazine.com
Dear Fledglings,
We hope you've had the chance to honor and thank your father today—and if that chance hasn't come yet, perhaps it will come this evening or later this week (better late than never.) Whether it's a phone call or a huge family BBQ, we're sure your papi will feel appreciated. And for those of you with difficult, absent, or diseased dads, we understand that today must be hard and we wish you all the [digital] love we can muster.
Wherever you are geographically and emotionally, happy Father's Day.
Feathery Hugs,
The Quail Bell Crew
We hope you've had the chance to honor and thank your father today—and if that chance hasn't come yet, perhaps it will come this evening or later this week (better late than never.) Whether it's a phone call or a huge family BBQ, we're sure your papi will feel appreciated. And for those of you with difficult, absent, or diseased dads, we understand that today must be hard and we wish you all the [digital] love we can muster.
Wherever you are geographically and emotionally, happy Father's Day.
Feathery Hugs,
The Quail Bell Crew
#Nostalgic #OurWorld #HappyFathersDay #VintageFamily #VintageFather #RetroDad #SummerHolidays #VintagePhoto
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From Army to Literary Accolates
By Virginia Woods
QuailBellMagazine.com
QuailBellMagazine.com
Tennessee native Charles Wright has not only won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, now he can add U.S. Poet Laureate to his cap. This Souder Family Professor of English at the University of Virginia came to poetry at the age of 23 shortly after joining the Army.
Wanna read some Wright? Here is a gallery of his complete bibliography with links to the titles, staring with his most recent books:
Wanna read some Wright? Here is a gallery of his complete bibliography with links to the titles, staring with his most recent books:
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What lies outside your residence?
By Quail Bell Camera Eye
QuailBellMagazine.com
QuailBellMagazine.com
A quick jog around your building with a camera in hand might force you to see where you live in micro, versus macro—or at least a little more intimately, anyway.
#Imaginative #YourWorld #OurWorld #PhotoSet #EverydayPhotography #CameraEye #Apartments #HomeSweetHome
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