Writer Ellen Morris Prewitt Blog

Everett’s The Trees

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on December 12, 2022. Posted in Featured, General, Racism to Reconciliation, Writing. 4 Comments on Everett’s The Trees

Percival Everett’s The TREES is the most sarcastic, gut-punchingly funny novel about the Emmett Till lynching. As I type that sentence, I think, What the hell? In the apt words of one of the characters from The Trees, it is, “A sentence I never imagined myself saying.” Very on-brand that this book, which short-listed for the Booker...

The Grace of Leaves

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on December 7, 2022. Posted in General. 4 Comments on The Grace of Leaves

This afternoon, I swept the front porch. Air too soft for December swirled around my ankles. “The leaves keep falling!” called the across-the-street neighbor who I can’t figure out when he chooses to speak, or not. “Yes,” I responded. “We don’t have a tree on our property, but we’ve got leaves.” Too...

By Hands Now Known

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on December 6, 2022. Posted in Racism to Reconciliation. 2 Comments on By Hands Now Known

I have been reading about my American South’s racial violence for over twenty years, and yet, “By Hands Now Known,” caused me to go get a rosary to hold while reading. The full name of the book is a clue to its unsettling nature: “By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners.” Margaret A. Burnham’s...

Stream of Life

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on December 3, 2022. Posted in Featured, General, GOD, Racism to Reconciliation. 6 Comments on Stream of Life

The stream of life is out in the country. You can only get to it by driving dirt roads. Then you have to walk a beaten path through pin oaks, pines, and hickories that will roll an ankle if you’re not careful. Just when you’ve given up, the trees open and a sandy-bottomed creek sparkles in the sun. We enter the water, startled by its...

You’re Swimming Streamline

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on November 26, 2022. Posted in Featured, General, LOVE. 2 Comments on You’re Swimming Streamline

The guests are gone, the washing begun. A wind arrived and blew slashing rain down the streets. The palms shook their heads like Peanuts characters dancing to Linus’s piano. Then the storm, too, passed. Water filled the potholes; for the sake of your suspension, beware the unseen. I, who made no food for Thanksgiving, baked cookies...

Three Books and a Play

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on November 25, 2022. Posted in General, Writing. No Comments on Three Books and a Play

I write book reviews with trepidation. Even if I intend to be laudatory, what if it doesn’t hit the author that way? That’s important because the only reviews I write are of books I enjoyed. I figure the world is harsh enough without posting negative reviews (though I have been known to occasionally rant on Goodreads.) Last year I decided...

The Great Food Debate

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on November 23, 2022. Posted in Featured, General. 8 Comments on The Great Food Debate

And so it begins, the great food debate. Mashed potatoes or no? Naked green beans or green bean casserole? Mac-n-cheese and, if so, what kind? (I’m not gonna give ink to the dressing or stuffing debate ’cause stuffing isn’t a real food–it’s a cut up mattress found in an abandoned warehouse sprinkled with some Cavender’s.)...

Safe Space, An Error

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on November 18, 2022. Posted in Featured, General, Racism to Reconciliation. 6 Comments on Safe Space, An Error

We sat around the table at Caritas Village. The time was the early 2010s, the place Memphis. We were in the back room behind the grey folding partition conducting our Memphis School for Servant Leadership Board meeting. We were probably eating chips or brownies or other snacks Board members brought for meetings. As the Board chair reviewed the Parker...

Veterans Day

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on November 11, 2022. Posted in General. 4 Comments on Veterans Day

We went to our Memphis grandson’s Grandparent’s Day. As part of the program, they sang each of the songs of the branches of the military. The emcee (yes, the program had an emcee) asked us as members of the audience to stand up when we had a relative in that branch of the service. I could have stood for each branch except for the Coast...

Kill Move Paradise

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on November 11, 2022. Posted in Featured, General, GRIEF, Racism to Reconciliation. 4 Comments on Kill Move Paradise

Usually, I review books in this space. Today, we’re doing something a little different. Because when I was sitting in the audience at the end of Kill Move Paradise, I thought, I have to write about this in the blog. So, today, it’s a play. Hattiloo Theatre My husband and I have been attending Memphis’s Hattiloo Theatre since...