stupid literature

I didn’t want to do it, but I watched it because my 13-year old said that I must. I made the mistake of taking her to Auschwitz. Then, she wanted to watch The Boy in Striped Pyjamas.

I didn’t think I should teach a class in literature but God seemed to push in that direction. Now they want to talk about prejudice.

I didn’t want to answer my own question, but my student threw it back at me.

‘Do you?’ she asked. ‘Do you think God holds us responsible for our inactivity in the face of oppression, slavery, injustice? If we know but we don’t do anything about it, are we guilty?’

Ignorance is bliss but is it an excuse?

‘Leave me alone, kid. I’m just a literature teacher today.’

Syria. North Korea. Rwanda. Eritrea.

I take out my bar of chocolate to drown my sorrows because I don’t drink alcohol.

How old were the hands that picked the cocoa beans in Cote d’Ivoire?

Can’t I just eat my chocolate in peace while Joseph Conrad paints a word picture of colonialism with our heart of darkness in the Congo or Dickens weaves a tale of two cities?

Sometimes a day in my life is interrupted by musings that I wish would shut up and leave me in peace with my chocolate.