My middle-school homeschool students had a pool party today to celebrate the end of our year reading The Odyssey together. It was epic. They stood in the water scream-laughing about the crushes they dramatically recounted for each other from their pre-Covid schooldays. I was kicking myself: it never occurred to me to ask them to write an assignment in the form of a love letter…
I brought banh mi sandwiches from a nearby restaurant, Little Vietnam, because we had also read a novel-in-verse about a refugee girl from Vietnam (Inside Out and Back Again, by Thannha Lai). Food goes with writing and reading in surprising ways. I’m thinking about their reactions to Nikki Giovanni’s hilarious and touching poems about food in Chasing Utopia. Can we make the world perfect by tasting fear as fear, and desire as desire, and not confusing them with love?
If you want to make… chickpea chaat
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