Did You Miss Me?

June 30, 2011 By Amy Julia Becker 4 Comments

Okay, that’s about the most narcissistic title for a blog post I can imagine–sorry! But some of you might have noticed that I haven’t responded to any comments in the past week, and I didn’t post anything on Tuesday or Wednesday. Because we took a family vacation (check back in tomorrow for some thoughts and more photos)!

I didn’t even bring my computer on vacation (a victory for me–hard to resist the temptation to stay connected), but I did keep a handwritten list of dozens of posts I just might write someday…

In the meantime, I wanted to draw your attention to some very helpful comments on some of last week’s posts:

Thanks to DD for explaining why the cover for A Good and Perfect Gift was the right choice:

…the second cover is much, much warmer. And the fact that the first one is reminiscent of the in-your-face, emotionally manipulative logo of an anti-abortion group is misleading in a negative way about the content of your book. It could potentially turn a whole host of people off that it is counter-productive to alienate. Also, while the black is sophisticated, it is a bit cold and suggestive of a possibly dark outcome and the fact that you only see the baby ~feet~ is not reassuring. The golden tones, the open field, the healthy little girl on the second cover are all more inviting and suggestive of a more hopeful, optimistic tale instead of a gravely serious downer.

(Ellen and Tricia, thanks for disagreeing–I’m grateful for honest opinions!)

Thanks, also, to those of you who suggested some questions for Rachel Simon. I should be talking with her next week, and I’ll try to work in all your wonderful suggestions.

Filed Under: family 4 Comments

Gendercide: Over One Hundred Million Missing Baby Girls

June 30, 2011 By Amy Julia Becker 2 Comments

I have a new post for her.meneutics called “The Lost Girls of India and China” that reports on the ongoing problem of “gendercide,” or abortion based upon the sex of the fetus. The post begins:

Across most cultures and throughout time, parents have wanted boys more than they have wanted girls. Recently developed technologies are allowing parents to reject their girl children before they are even born.In India and China, the world’s two most populated nations, parents have chosen to abort hundreds of millions of baby girls.

According to Samanth Subramanian, writing forThe National, “Indians are aborting more female foetuses (sic.) than at any time in their nation’s history, with the practice growing fastest in the more affluent states. . . . There are now 914 girls for every 1,000 boys under the age of 6.”

Furthermore, the BBC News reports that in India, “activists fear eight million female foetuses may have been aborted in the past decade.” In addition to a large number of abortions using so-called “sex-selection,” the infant mortality rate is higher for girls than boys in India, probably due to a combination of neglect and infanticide.

To keep reading, click here.

For those of you interested in some other recent articles on this topic, see Ross Douthat’s piece for the New York Times: “160 Million and Counting” and Jonathan Last’s piece for the Wall Street Journal: “The War Against Girls.”

For those of you interested in more information including ways to help effect change, visit All Girls Allowed, a website for an organization devoted to exposing the truth about gendercide, rescuing victims, and celebrating the lives of girls and mothers.

Filed Under: Faith, family Tagged With: , , , , 2 Comments

Talking with Rachel Simon

June 27, 2011 By Amy Julia Becker 10 Comments

A few weeks ago, I reviewed Rachel Simon’s new novel, The Story of Beautiful Girl. As I wrote earlier, the book is a lovely story that travels a road of despair and delight, weaving together themes related to disability and faith. I loved it.

But it gets better. Rachel Simon noticed my review, and she mentioned it on her own blog and tweeted me her thanks. We’ve been in touch since then, and she agreed to do an interview. I’m eager to talk to her about all sorts of things, but I’m especially curious about how she combined her own experience as the sister of someone with an intellectual disability (read her memoir Riding the Bus with my Sister for more about that) with the creation of a fictional character.

So here’s what I’m wondering–if you had an hour to talk with Rachel Simon, what would you ask?

Filed Under: Books, Disability, Faith Tagged With: , , 10 Comments

The Ethics of Time

June 24, 2011 By Amy Julia Becker 2 Comments

When I went to the spiritual spa last week, I brought a few books with me. I’ve been slowly making my way through John Stott’s The Cross of Christ, and I brought Tim Keller’s latest, King’s Cross. But I didn’t open either one. Instead, I started reading Judith Shulevitz’s The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time. I’ve only made it through three chapters so far, so I may well write more in weeks to come, but I’ll offer a few thoughts so far.

This book took me to a thin place, a place where ideas seep into my consciousness in such a way as to transform my thinking and doing. Shulevitz is a somewhat-practicing Jew who found herself fascinated by and yet ambivalent about the Sabbath, just as, she claims, most Americans find themselves both longing for and eager to avoid the Sabbath:

When we pine for escape from the rat race; when we check into spas, yoga centers, encounter weekends, spiritual retreats… when we deplore the increase in time devoted to consumption… whenever we worry about these things, we are remembering the Sabbath, its power to protect us from the clamor of our own desires. But when, say, we return from a trip to some less developed country and feel a sense of relief that our twenty-four-hour economy allows us to work, shop, dine, and be entertained when we want to, not according to some imposed schedule, at that point, too, we are remembering the Sabbath. We are remembering how claustrophobic its rigid temporal boundaries used to make us feel. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Books, Faith, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , 2 Comments

College, Down Syndrome, and the Plans we Have…

June 23, 2011 By Amy Julia Becker 6 Comments

Penny graduates from preschool

It happens all the time. Friends talk about our children, their own children, their grandchildren with reference to where they’ll go to college. College motivates some seven year olds we know (or, perhaps I should say, motivates the parents of some seven year olds) to play lacrosse, piano, violin. College comes up when William demonstrates his precocious language skills. It comes up when people assume that our children will follow in our footsteps and go to the same schools we did.

I know it’s normal to think about our children’s future. And I know it can be good to dream on their behalf. But assuming that I know where our children will end up in fifteen years or making them learn a skill for the sake of college admissions baffles me. I want to help them discover what they’re interested in right now, not direct them towards what they ought to be interested in decades from now. I want to help them push through the tedium of learning to play an instrument or dribble a ball or read a book not because it will improve their SAT scores or make them stand out in an admissions pile but because perseverance leads to character (see Romans 5 on this point), because there’s value in learning, and because music, reading, and sports bring joy and goodness in and of themselves, not because those things are tickets to the future. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Down Syndrome, family Tagged With: , , 6 Comments
« Older Posts