Kendall Defoe
Bio
Teacher, reader, writer, dreamer... I am a college instructor who cannot stop letting his thoughts end up on the page.
And I did this: Buy Me A Coffee... And I did this:
Stories (525/0)
The Nobel Prize Lecture
The following is an official transcript of the Nobel lecture given on Dec. 10, 20--: Ladies and gentlemen, your majesties, and my fellow laureates: I must say that I still feel as though I have been having a long and beautiful dream these last few months. Nothing can prepare the writer for the moment – a vivid point of realization - when he discovers that his chosen profession was not a mistake or a whim that would have been best left to adolescence. For that, I thank the academy. I thank you all.
By Kendall Defoe 3 years ago in Fiction
I Am Not Her Negro
This was the scene. I had just watched the movie “I Am Not Your Negro” at the AMC Forum in Montreal. I quite liked it; many of the clips used to trace important moments in the life of the writer James Baldwin were material I had seen online or on TV programs too far back in my youth to forget them. What surprised me the most was the general premise of the movie: Baldwin intended to write a book based on the lives of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Medgar Evers. He knew all three men. He understood what they represented for black America and how they were molded and formed by their relationship to white America. And he saw that all three men wanted the same things: respect, opportunities, and hope for themselves, their communities, and their families. Those dreams would not always be granted in their lives, but it was earned in their deaths and the legacies they left to be discussed and debated. The moments when Baldwin’s own responses to their losses are shared by Samuel L. Jackson are very moving; some of the most powerful moments in the film have no visible action on the screen except his voice repeating Baldwin’s own deep feelings. And because of these moments, I considered the film a true success. The audience seemed to feel that way, too, although I could not measure all of the individual opinions next to mine. It was a movie I had to watch without being conscious of any after-credits discussion about its merits, problems, and what it was all meant. I never thought about what it meant. I thought about how I felt. I thought about James Baldwin. I thought that I had to see it again.
By Kendall Defoe 3 years ago in Confessions
Papers:
They were all so proud of him. He was the first one in his family to go to university; the first one to have a degree from anywhere besides high school or community college. When they arrived home from the campus, most of the relatives who were in town greeted him and his mother and brothers. People he knew as uncles gripped him with dangerous handshakes; the women who were known as aunts embraced him, smiled and went back to unwrapping casseroles and plates of still steaming piles of food. They all wanted to see the diploma he still had in the envelope, and he had almost forgotten about the gown and the mortarboard in a plastic bag until they all began making requests for him to put them both back on and pose with his degree without his family. They all wanted to remember this very special moment in their lives.
By Kendall Defoe 3 years ago in Families
My Love Is Like a Red, Red Rose
Again with the flowers? There should be a law about this. Every single time with roses. Who wrote that rule, anyway? Why ruin a perfectly good plant by taking it out of its home and – let’s be fair – killing it for some sort of mating ritual. There should be a law…
By Kendall Defoe 3 years ago in Humans
Try
Was it clear from the message what they wanted him to do? * The letter arrived in a beautiful envelope, with his name and address written in embossed letters on red glossy paper. He had woken up that morning wondering if he was going to speak to his neighbor about their dog and their children again (they were always teasing the poor thing when he saw them in their yard). At his front door, he picked up the letter and thought that this might be another joke. But as he read the note inside, he realized that this was a real company and that he knew the name of the man who had contacted him. This was real.
By Kendall Defoe 3 years ago in Families