silly love songs.

I'm always reading something, always escaping. Right now, I'm in the middle of the North Pole with Frankenstein and his creature. Last night, I was in Paris with Giovanni and David. The night before that, I was driving across America with Carol and Therese.

I'm reading about two books a week right now. And despite the fact that I am escaping my real problems, I have an excuse because it's all in the name of schoolwork.

There's something to be said for escaping in the pages of books.

In a way, you want so bad to be a part of the little self-contained worlds that you make the worlds a part of your own. I feel like every character I've ever loved is some part of me, yet, despite all of the morals and lessons these characters have learned, I'm still so lost.

I just want my own personal James Baldwin, who can make things right again.

rant.

Here is a question I pose not only to the English department at UCLA, but to all English departments everywhere and to Norton Abrams and his Norton Anthology:

Why do we focus more time on mentally retarded men than we do talented women in our English classes? Unless you take a Women's Lit class, English teachers glaze over amazing women authors like Aphra Behn and spend four sections discussing Alexander Pope and his humpback.

And I have a female teacher. Yet she focuses on quotations from Behn that include diction like "weak" and "indebted" when talking about female writing.

Fuck that.