November 21, 2011
Christ United Methodist Ministry Center
“Christ in the Heart of San Diego”
3295 Meade Avenue
San Diego, CA 92116
(619) 284-9205
You are invited to our Thanksgiving Lunch Thursday noon to 2:00 PM. This year’s meal is being prepared and served by Christ Kitchen. Invite your neighbors. Volunteers are needed, so contact Pastor Steve Snyder, Chef Tony or the church office if you would like to help.
Pastorgraphs: “Mississippi Writing’”
Every teacher wonders what it would be like to pick up the newspaper and read that a former student has succeeded in an extraordinary way. I can now check that off my bucket list.
Jesmyn Ward was my student at Coast Episcopal High School in Pass Christian, Mississippi. Last Wednesday night, Jesmyn won the coveted National Book Award for her novel, Salvage the Bones. The book, her second, has won wide acclaim. The Boston Globe wrote, "Ward’s writing is startling in its graphic clarity… [This] author has an unusual gift”. The Washington Post said, "Masterful… Salvage the Bones has the aura of a classic about it." She joins a long line of Mississippi writers such as William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Willie Morris and John Grisham.
She probably doesn’t remember “Ol’ Dr. J”, her computer science and social studies teacher, but I remember her. “Mimi” (as we called her) was and still is a beautiful, bright and charming person. It should come as no surprise she was a cheerleader and an outstanding student-citizen. She is an inspiration!
Mimi grew up in tiny DeLisle, Mississippi, a town so small it has no post office, a few miles inland from the Gulf Coast, west of Gulfport and Biloxi. It lies just north of Pass Christian, which took the brunt of the two most brutal hurricanes in American History: Camille in 1969 and Katrina in 2005. We should not be surprised that the setting of Jesmyn’s novel is a Mississippi Coast town awaiting the arrival of a hurricane.
But Jesmyn’s novel is much more than that. “Raw” is the term I read most in the reviews. Mimi paints vivid characters against the backdrop of impending doom. It is the story of a poor African-American family whose mother has died, whose alcoholic absentee father leaves the children to fend mostly for themselves. The main character is the 14-year old daughter who has just found out she is pregnant, and tries to hold her family together in the midst of impending doom. (Not a Sunday School lesson, but hey, I’m captivated.)
Did I mention Mimi is as bright as she is beautiful? After Coast Episcopal High, she became a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, and then earned a master’s in fine arts at Michigan, along with five Hopwood awards for her essays. She is currently the John Grisham Writer-In-Residence at Ole Miss, and will become an assistant professor at The University of South Alabama in the fall of 2012.
Now why am I writing about this in my Pastorgraphs? (I’m glad you asked.) Of course, I’m so very proud of Mimi. And NO! I did NOT “teach this young lady everything she knows”.
I’m writing about Mimi because the student has become the teacher.
In one interview, Mimi was asked about rejection (something every writer experiences sooner or later.) She replied that after publishers rejected her first book, the temptation was to say, “Well, I tried it and failed.” She contemplated going into another profession. But then she said, “No! If I give in to rejection, then failure wins!” So she made a commitment to write again and again from her heart.
Jesmyn has reminded her old teacher that writing (how I plan to spend a great portion of my golden years) should not be about trying to please the critics, but a journal of the heart. Today my heart is over-flowingly proud for my former student. Jesmyn would say, “Write what you heart tells you, whether the world accepts it or not”.
And I just did.
Devotedly, and Happy Thanksgiving!
Parson Bill
From the Quote Garden
“Don't compromise yourself - you're all you have.”
― John Grisham, The Rainmaker
― John Grisham, The Rainmaker
[Photo courtesy Associate Press and The Clarion Ledger]
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