If You're Born Lucky, You

I Had A Fantasy As A Child That I Might Be A Writer Someday. I Always Thought That Meant You Went To New York Or Paris. But After That Intense Summer, I Never Thought That I Wanted To Live Any Place But Chicago. It Also Made Me See What The Stakes Were In The Civil Rights Movement. And It Made Me See What Real Hatred Was Like And The Forms That It Took. But It Also Made Me Understand How Powerless Ordinary People Feel In Their Lives.

And The Fury In My Community Was Just Staggering. The Young Priests In The Parish Were Behind The Message. The Older Priests Weren't Necessarily, But They All Followed The Orders Of The Cardinal And Read The Letter. Every Sunday, 2,000 People Came To Mass At That Parish. The Following Sunday, The Attendance Dropped To 200, And Never Recovered.

I Love To Sing. I'm A Soprano.

Sometimes I Think I'm A One-trick Pony Because I'm Not Very Inventive About New Ways Of Telling Stories.

I Look At The Great Poets Of The Soviet Union, Like Anna Akhmatova, Who Endured Far Worse Then Anything We've Seen Or Hopefully That We Will Ever See. If They Could Keep Writing And Keep A Voice Alive, Keep People Hopeful Through Their Poetry, Then I Would Be Ashamed To Stop And To Give In. It Would Be Really Self-indulgent, Unacceptable, And Inexcusable To Walk Away From It.