General Archives - Page 23 of 85 - Ellen Morris Prewitt

Do You Want to Be Lied to, or Not?

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on September 18, 2020. Posted in General, Racism to Reconciliation. 10 Comments on Do You Want to Be Lied to, or Not?

They use it as an asterisk. Like when the governing commission is forced to add an explanation to a sports stat. Babe Ruth and Roger Maris or whatever. The sports hero is the greatest ever…except with this teensy asterisk caveat. The same treatment is granted to the white men who established America. Historians, politicians, we white...

My Date with a Neo-Nazi

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on September 11, 2020. Posted in General, Racism to Reconciliation. 6 Comments on My Date with a Neo-Nazi

I went to lunch with a Neo-Nazi. We had gyros and iced tea, I’m pretty sure, but the details of the food escape me. What I’ll never forget was my dawning realization that this man was a nutcase. He was tall and incredibly good-looking in a blond Aryan blue-eyed way. (Yes, this is a true story, though it’s starting to...

If I Had Two Wings

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on September 1, 2020. Posted in General, Writing. 10 Comments on If I Had Two Wings

I didn’t know what I was doing. I had quit practicing law to become a writer. In typical lawyerly fashion, I formulated a “private MFA” where I would take 2 years and teach myself to write. I didn’t want to get an actual MFA because I figured, as a lawyer who had been the office’s managing partner, I would be a...

China, Words, and Hope

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on August 28, 2020. Posted in General, Writing. 2 Comments on China, Words, and Hope

I don’t know if this is appropriate or not, but I need to tell you that a really nice publishing house is, right now, reading the full manuscript on MUD ISLAND, the mystery featuring a formerly homeless young woman set in Memphis in 1997 (which I revised from being a formerly homeless old man set in 2019), and I’m trying not to...

White People’s Ego Will Get You Killed

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on August 18, 2020. Posted in General, Racism to Reconciliation. 10 Comments on White People’s Ego Will Get You Killed

The two young men had been high school friends. One was Black, one was white. The Black man went missing. He had last been seen with the young white man, his friend. The white man schemed with his half-brother to shoot the young Black man and rob him. The brothers buried the Black man in a shallow grave, and the white man’s wife allegedly later...

The Mississippi that Might Still Be

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on June 28, 2020. Posted in Featured, General, Racism to Reconciliation. 2 Comments on The Mississippi that Might Still Be

When I heard that Mississippi during this massive moment of potential change was focusing on its racist flag, at first I thought, oh, dear Lord —that’s what Mississippians think matters now? But. I lose count when I try to say how many generations I’ve been from Mississippi (’cause, you know, we’re not very good...

My Best Reader has Left Me

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on June 18, 2020. Posted in General, GRIEF, LOVE. 8 Comments on My Best Reader has Left Me

Mother at her 90th birthday party Marguerite Virginia Price Van Hecke died on May 29, 2020, following emergency surgery. Virginia was born on June 9, 1929, on the Road of Remembrance in Jackson, Mississippi, as the second child of Maggie Mae and James Murray Price, a little girl who was to have been named George William. From the start, she...

When a White Woman Accuses a Black Man

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on June 5, 2020. Posted in General, GOD, HOMELESSNESS, Racism to Reconciliation. 6 Comments on When a White Woman Accuses a Black Man

He was a writer, a man I’ll call Jonathan. Jonathan was in writing group with me one hour before he was accused of having snatched a purse from a woman on the street, a felony even though the purse had less than $10 in it. I told the investigators that Jonathan had just left writing group when this crime supposedly occurred; there was no...

Christians Leave Trump in Droves

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on June 3, 2020. Posted in General, GOD, Racism to Reconciliation. 15 Comments on Christians Leave Trump in Droves

The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church condemned it. Trump “used a church building and the Holy Bible for partisan political purposes. This was done in a time of deep hurt and pain in our country, and his action did nothing to help us or to heal us,” Presiding Bishop Michael Curry said in a statement. The Episcopal Bishop of Washington...

That Which Soothes When All Begins to Crumble

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on May 26, 2020. Posted in General, GOD, GRIEF, Writing. 4 Comments on That Which Soothes When All Begins to Crumble

Though I welcomed—after our terror subsided—the stillness of our shelter-in-place life, we who had been circling and circling for years, the last few days I have felt as if I might crumble, my “dust to dust” having become friable, my feet of clay exposed, a descending that was not helped when the priest who understood me and yet...