Joan Steinau Lester

A shortened version of this blog aired on NPR's KQED Perpsectives Commenary. 

The Kansas vote affirming the state Constitution's protection of abortion rights affirmed my faith in people. The eighteen-point margin of victory in a socially conservative state showed that in our darkest hours we can always count on the dawn. As morning follows night, a new day inevitably breaks.

Supreme Courts will make cruel decisions like the recent one repealing Roe, but life keeps moving on. The folks in Kansas, in the biggest turnout for a primary election in the state's history, reminded us that unjust laws don't last forever, nor do they have the power to penetrate everywhere.

Kansas has a venerable liberation history. From 1854 to 1859 the state was a battleground: would it enter the Union as a Free or Slave state? Pro-slavery voters poured over from neighboring Missouri to rush through bogus elections proving Slavery sentiment. Northern Free Staters, led by abolitionist John Brown, flocked to settle in Kansas so they could vote Free Soil. Fierce battles ensued, with each side trying to oust the other, until the state became known as Bloody Kansas. Read More 

I'm staring out the window of my tiny writing cottage, surprised to see new rosebuds. I had thought, by July, they were done. But four small buds poke jauntily through a tangle of leaves. Spotting a sliver of pink, I smile.

Until I turn on the news: Bombs fall, shattering bodies. Women are doomed, our rights stripped away. The planet sizzles. Those who can afford air conditioning—and electricity--will be the new elite, further warming our world. Voting rights, democracy itself, are under attack.

How can I hold the joys of rosebuds with the awareness of a cruel planet--and remain engaged without falling into despair, like so many friends? Read More 

(This essay first appeared on CNN, August 18, 2022)

In 1981, long before the legalization of same-sex marriage, I committed to living for the rest of my life with Carole, the woman I loved. But when Carole and I introduced each other to friends, we had no language to describe our relationship.  

If I referred to her as my "partner," many assumed business partner. "Lover" felt too intimate, "life-partner" too clunky, "special friend" an abhorred remnant of a closeted era.

"Wife" would have made our relationship absolutely clear, but it was a word denied to us at the time.

The penalties for this extra-legal union were severe: Carole's adored father, fearing his Catholic priest's condemnation, refused to speak to her. We both faced potential job losses if found out. Carole, working for the federal government, had to maintain an especially low profile since we'd heard of lesbians being fired once they were "discovered." Read More 

This self portrait by the late painter Alice Neel so inspires me. Remnants of the "beauty myth" females are fed all our lives – i.e. we must be conventionally beautiful to be accepted and loved – still cling to most of us, even in our elder years. As our bodies inevitably sag, thanks to the wonderful power of gravity which holds us firmly to earth, it becomes harder to look firmly in the mirror without turning away. Read More 

 The written word has ignited revolutions, toppled dictatorships. A well-told narrative, activating the story-telling DNA lodged deep in our bones, has the power to heal rifts or pour balm on festering wounds. With it we can foster new visions about who we are as a people--or who we might become. Writing is one of our most robust artistic instruments for deep social impact, at its best fostering empathy for people we might never meet, inspiring us to compassionate action. Writing can lead us deep inside, altering an internal landscape. How many of us have been forever changed by something we've read at a critical juncture? 

While we hear often how influential writing can be for readers, less is said of its impact on authors. The act of composing can also resolve questions within the writer. Even the process of tapping computer keys or placing Read More 

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Our rag-tag group slept on the pews in our sleeping bags, jammed together, giddy, singing freedom songs half the night. "We shall overcome, some day." My sleeping bag, borrowed from a friend, was damp with sweat while I lay in the hot, muggy church, fervent with hope.

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Cariol Horne is my newest social justice hero.  A Black Buffalo, New York police officer in 2006, she forcibly intervened when her fellow officer Gregory Kwiatkowski was viciously beating Neal Mack, a Black man.

Cariol Horne reaffirms my conviction that no matter the obstacles, if we hold fast to a vision of justice and keep moving toward it, we will indeed overcome.She heard Mack gasp, "I can't breathe" after Kwiatkowski put him in a chokehold, with a knee to the neck.

"Let him go!" she screamed.

But Kwiatkowski didn't move. Read More 

THIS ESSAY FIRST APPEARED IN THE LOS ANGELES TIMES ON JUNE 6, 2021

REPRINTED JUNE 7 IN THE NEW YORK TIMES ONLINE PUBLICATION "THE MORNING"

 
After three years of marriage, my writer husband Julius Lester and I had worked out a good arrangement: He wrote in our grimy New York apartment, taught a few guitar students and cared for baby Rosa while I attended City College graduate school. My fellowship funded it all.

But late one January night he stood in our kitchen, stirring diapers boiling on the stove, and told me he'd decided to move South. He wanted to be a cultural worker for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. I looked at him in disbelief.

"We said we'd never be apart," I told him while I rocked Rosa, asleep in her carriage.  

When he said he had to go, I responded "Take me with you." Our baby could come too.

But he said he couldn't take a white wife. It was too dangerous. We might be arrested or killed. For him, the South was home. I would be a tourist. He said it was his revolutionary duty. "I'm called to go," he said. "By myself." Read More 

I used to think I was among the wokest of the woke.  Naturally I wouldn't have said so aloud, but after all, I, a white woman, had married a Black man before that was even legal, nationally. Raised our biracial children. Trained anti-racist leaders. Published pro-equity books and op-eds. Marched and chanted.

But after May 25, 2020, when George Floyd screamed for his mama and people poured out of lockdown, something new broke open inside me. As well as inside everyone I know.

Black friends grew bolder. Scorched by racism all their lives they'd adapted, these successful women had perhaps grown a bit cautious. Now I'm watching folks I've known for decades become fervently political. They're expressing rage, loudly, plus their fierce pride. Read More 

When people ask me what do you do, for the last twenty-five years I've answered, "I'm a writer." Sometimes I add, "An author." 

If the questioner still looks blank, I'll say, with authority, "I'm a professional writer."

I've learned to define myself in a powerful tone because so many people have odd assumptions about a woman writer. Several years ago, for instance, a chipper young teller at the bank window asked me, "What are you doing today?" 

Eager to get moving, I replied somewhat crisply, "I'm writing. Like I do every day. I'm a writer."

"Oh, how nice," she said, with syrup in her voice. "It gives you something to fill your time." Read More 

 I, who love words so much, am surprised to find myself newly enchanted with the sentence as a unit of language. Sentences in all their delicious variety, some with many clauses, dipping in and out, amplifying a theme before it brings itself, sharply, to a halt.

Or long sentences that make you think, having to puzzle out their meaning, like digging into a pomegranate to get the sweet, juicy seeds. Laborious, but usually worth it. Then there are the short, declarative sentences that command attention. Look up! they say.

The lowly sentence, which all of us use every day, is the building block of prose.  Read More