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Leilani Squire

The Courage to Create

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In the early 1980s when I studied choreography with Dr. Alma Hawkins at Santa Monica Community College, The Courage to Create by Rollo May was on the reading list for the class. You may wonder: Why would there be a reading list for a dance class? ...

Whistle

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I just finished reading James Jones’ Whistle, the final novel of his World War II trilogy. A couple of months ago, I read the second in the trilogy The Thin Red Line. I didn’t think Jones could top that one. But he did, as a storyteller and a writer. ...

When you find the book to inspire you

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Sometimes a book will appear in my life for a reason. Perhaps this is the case more often than not and the reason I picked up My Beloved World when I did and read it when I did. Justice Sotomayor’s story is an inspiration for me, and I hope for other ...

1984 – Has Orwell’s World Arrived?

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When I was fourteen or fifteen, a group of classmates and I read four books within a few months: 1984, Animal Farm, Brave New World and Lord of the Flies. Our young minds were seeking, exploring, and discovering the questions that have haunted ...

Seeing

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Terrible voting weather, remarked the presiding officer of polling station fourteen as he snapped shut his soaked umbrella and took off the raincoat that had proved of little use to him during the breathless forty-meter dash from the place where he ...

Loving Day

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“In the ghetto there is a mansion, and it is my father’s house.” As soon as I read this first sentence of Loving Day by Mat Johnson I sighed and thought, “Oh, good,” a book I’m going to love. I had just finished two other books, a memoir by an ...

The Stick Soldiers

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The Stick Soldiers by Hugh Martin is a book of poetry but it’s more than a collection of poems. It is a brave, honest and authentic journey of a young man who served six years in the Army National Guard as an M1A1 Tanker and was deployed to Iraq in ...

War Trash

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As I was lying on the acupuncturist table, letting the needles do their magic, I listened to the music playing quietly in the room. My acupuncturist is from Korea and the music he plays is Korean. Suddenly, I realized that what I was listening to ...