Christopher Schroeder

Category: national

  • Why Today Matters

    I sympathize with those who tell me that they’re skipping the vote because their ballots won’t make any difference.

    I also wonder whether my vote matters when no outcome, neither local nor national, will be decided by a single vote. I additionally wonder if campaign promises count when elected officials make their choices.

    Then I remember that we vote for other, and equally if not more important, reasons. In particular, we’re confirming our citizenship and choosing our communities.

    Voting is the way we affirm our membership in communities when these select their representatives. It’s also the way we participate in perhaps the most central choice in these spaces.

    These reasons remain, and are why regardless of the results all who vote win.

  • Secularism Indeed

    I had an unexpected experience at a recent secularism and literature mini-symposium.

    This event, which was moderated by the UIC English Department Head, included three other presenters, two local and one with some Chicago connection. The moderator offers initial observations, the presenters read papers aloud, and then the audience asked questions.

    I am genuinely interested in functions for literature beyond literary studies journals and college English classrooms. I expected something about secularism and literature in the present tense. What I got unexpectedly intrigued and repulsed me.

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  • Saving Others and Ourselves

    I recently reread Colson Whitehead’s (2019) The Nickel Boys, which seemed more compelling the second time.

    This story, which will appear on big screens as a new movie this fall, is based upon an actual Florida reformatory school, which Whitehead reportedly encountered on social media after a local university uncovered unmarked graves on its grounds. From here, he researched and then built a story about 1960s Jim Crow abuse as experienced by two protagonists Elwood Curtis and Jack Turner, which later won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

    One reviewer (Rich 2019) claims that this book attests to the American failure to confront its history and to reenact its worst parts. I agree but actually think the book is even more bleak, especially in the way it exposes the limits of literacy and education.

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