Section: Letters Home

About this Section:

“Letters Home” was a column of personal and cultural reflections that appeared in the Santa Cruz Express (March, 1981-April, 1985), the Santa Cruz Sun (September, 1986-October, 1989) and in the Santa Cruz Magazine. For more information about the Santa Cruz Sun, see: http://news.santacruz.com/2009/10/15/quake_led_to_setting_of_santa_cruz_sun

Modest Proposal: A Politics of Babies

  Since at least the late seventies, babies have been at the center of political debate. By defining embryos as babies and defining abortion as murdering them, right-wing politicians have captured the hearts and political energy of many good-hearted Americans. But there are other, more generous ways to put babies at the center. We do […]


Karen Brodine

Karen Brodine was a poet—a poet not only of words but of her own life. A radical activist and theorist, an editor, a typesetter, a teacher—these disparate appearances came out of a coherent center: an analysis, she would have said. The title poem of her last book, Woman Sitting at the Machine, Thinking  (Red Letter […]


Imagined Ancestors

I am not at all sure I approve of this century. All its virtues are double-edged, edges that cut more deeply for being denied. Of course I’m grateful to the time we live in.  I’m grateful for my life: had I lived at any other time, I would certainly have been dead several times over […]


About Letters Home

“Letters Home” was a column of personal and cultural reflections that appeared in the Santa Cruz Express (March, 1981-April, 1985), the Santa Cruz Sun (September, 1986-October, 1989) and in the Santa Cruz Magazine.  For more information about the Santa Cruz Sun, see: http://news.santacruz.com/2009/10/15/quake_led_to_setting_of_santa_cruz_sun