Translating a World on the Edge

I know some of you are not Trump supporters, but I know you LOVE your country. You do not want our American rights to be cancelled. You do not want America to have no borders, to have women and children abused on the border in heart-breaking ways, to have alien criminals allowed into every state in our union, bringing their drugs with them to sell throughout out country causing the deaths of so many. You do not want to to be energy-dependent again on the Middle East, to have no right to free speech, to have no right to bear arms. You do not want our American heritage dragged through the mud by lies and hypocrisy. You do not want your religion threatened. You do not want GOD demeaned. You do not want your America to cuddle-up to China like a sick puppy. You do not want your rights as parents to be taken over by the government disguised as a school board. You do not want men to be able to compete in women’s sports. You want TRUTH not LIES from the government and the media. And most specifically you want a government you can TRUST to put the PEOPLE FIRST, and not ITSELF.

I sincerely believe that this man, Donald Trump, is the ONLY person who can and WILL make America Great Again. Give it a listen, and then SHARE. https://www.youtube.com/live/X_ik069yLlQ?feature=share

We cannot remain SILENT when our country is literally being cancelled.

ABSENCE by Kaye Park Hinckley

Reviewed by Courtney Guest Kim

Genre: Southern Gothic

Year Published: 2020

Now in Hardcover

Audience: wives and mothers

Absence belongs to the Southern Gothic tradition because the secrets are dreadful; the stubbornness is perverse; and children play with a human skull in bed. Yes, there is a version of incest too. But if it were possible to reclaim a genre in the tradition of Sidney Lanier—one of whose poems provides both the epigraph and the title of this story—Absence would rightfully be called Southern Poetic. This novel with intense resolve excises every trace of trashiness from its postmodern Alabama countryside. These peanut farmers are poor, but they have a quality not usually ascribed to them: dignity. And because they have dignity, when they fall into evil ways the outcome is not merely horrible, but tragic.

When you close this book, you will feel an anxious impulse to confess your sins, lest they fester and warp the lives of everyone connected to you. More surprisingly, you will have learned to associate the peanut plant with the redemption of man. Kaye Park Hinckley returns to country life what we have long since ceased to expect of it: beauty and meaning. At every level her story reaches roots into the deepest origins of this nation. But apart from explaining a few Creek Indian words, she does not afflict her characters with peculiar dialogue or bizarre impulses. Nor does she try to render local speech patterns into idiosyncratic spelling. Her story utterly rejects every facile trope of a throwaway culture. It hones in on the most important thing this country has trashed: human souls.

James Greene is desperate, but he is not vulgar. His fall into evil is the age-old tragedy of man. He does not do evil because he wants evil, but because he wants the good that has been denied him. Like Adam in the Garden of Eden, he reaches for a fruit that is good in itself, and he does it for the sake of the woman he loves. Like Cain, faced with disappointment, he does not turn toward God in sorrow but away from God in anger. And if you are tempted to shrug off these choices as minor ones, Absence will chill you with the stark reminder that human beings are not just bodies, but souls, whose spiritual influence cannot be suppressed, even when the bodies have gone missing. It’s not just that the ends do not justify the means: the evil means will work their poison through every aspect of your life. So beware, reader. When you enter this terrain of red soil, you leave behind every escape devised by an escapist culture. There are only two alternatives–hell on earth, or redemption through suffering.