The Blank Spot in our Brains.
Thank you to Tod Davies and Exterminating Angel Press for publishing this excerpt from my as-yet unnamed memoir-in-progress. “The Blank Spot in our Brains” opens with a story about my mother and veers off from there. The short piece explores how hard it is to accept information we don’t want to be true. I now have four excerpts from the memoir published. I’m writing like mad to get it put together. Please wish me luck on this project.
Hope you enjoy! And Happy New Year!!!
convict leasing, How Our Brains Work, Mississippi, The Blank Spot in Our Brains
Susanne Fletcher
Eagerly awaiting the publication of your memoir.
Ellen Morris Prewitt
I’m so glad you are drawn to it!
Donna
Like Susanne, I’m looking forward to your memoir as well Ellen!
Ellen Morris Prewitt
Oh, good!
Joanne Corey
That’s a beautifully written piece, Ellen!
Because I’m reading it in February and it’s Black History Month, I’m also thinking of how convict leasing is a forgotten piece of how racism perpetuated after chattel slavery was abolished. That DT and those trying to appease him have now ceased to acknowledge Black History Month makes this piece even more important and meaningful for me.
Ellen Morris Prewitt
Thank you so much, Joanne, for reading and for your kind words. When I look at Mississippi’s sweep of history, it’s the constant morphing that strikes me—slavery to convict leasing to sharecropping and Jim Crow and lynching and mass incarceration. So much physical and economic violence. But you don’t see it if you don’t look at history.