🔖 Read The Winter Zoo by Kate Zambreno (The Yale Review).
For a few years when M. was a toddler, our family went to Knoxville - the place of my mother’s birth - for The Collective library conference. W. would present and M. and I would wander about town, exploring the best haunts and generally enjoying the adorable downtown and the home of the 1982 World’s Fair.
One of the places I took M. was Zoo Knoxville. We were there in mid-March so it was pretty much a winter zoo like Kate Zambreno talks about here, and our experiences there were very similar.
I acknowledge that I live and work on unceded Lumbee, Skaruhreh/Tuscarora, Cheraw, Catawba, Saponi, Occaneechi, and Shakori land. I give respect and reverence to those who came before me. I thank Holisticism for the text of this land acknowledgement.
We must acknowledge that much of what we know of this country today, including its culture, economic growth, and development throughout history and across time, has been made possible by the labor of enslaved Africans and their ascendants who suffered the horror of the transatlantic trafficking of their people, chattel slavery, and Jim Crow. We are indebted to their labor and their sacrifice, and we must acknowledge the tremors of that violence throughout the generations and the resulting impact that can still be felt and witnessed today. I thank Dr. Terah ‘TJ’ Stewart for the text of this labor acknowledgement.
