Richard Rodriguez and the Lenoir-Rhyne University Visiting Writers Series

While this post is not specifically about women or women's issues, its worth noting that tonight was the first event in the 2009 - 2010 Lenoir-Rhyne University's Visiting Writers Series.

Tonight we were given the privilege to hear Richard Rodriguez, an American journalist, essayist and author.  For decades Mr. Rodriguez has shared with us his many observances and experiences as the son of Mexican immigrants  in San Francisco.  With a lot of humor  and transparency this evening, he shared with us his thoughts on race and immigration, and his insights into the reasons for our country's seeming difficulty with our heritage as an immigrant nation.

I have listened to Mr. Rodriguez for years on NPR and PBS.  I have always been particularly taken with his ability to get under  a subject to its heart, whether talking about race and immigration or other issues of the day.

I appreciate his remarks about the importance of non-fiction.  I am a big fan of non-fiction writing and agree with him that non-fiction does not get enough attention.  It is through non-fiction that we can get a deeper explanation of events.  To imagine what can be, I think it is important to know what is and what has been.  Authors like Mr.  Rodriguez give us not only a glimpse into events from our history, but an insight into their past and present meaning.  He has given us a body of work that is so intensely personal and honest, showing us intimately what it means to be a first generation American, bridging the world of his parents to his world as an assimilated Mexican American.

I have provided links here to some places on the web where you can read Mr. Rodriguez's essays and hear him interviewed.  Do a search for him and you will find an abundance of biographical information and many interviews and essays to keep you reading for a long time.

His books include: Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez; Mexico’s Children; Days of Obligation: An Argument With My Mexican Father, and Brown: The Last Discovery of America.  

I am so grateful to Mr. Rodriguez for all of the time he has taken to share with us the depth of connection we have to our not so distant neighbors to the south, our American brothers and sisters.  And I am also grateful to Lenoir-Rhyne University for bringing authors such as Mr. Rodriguez to us,  with his unique perspective into what it means to be an American.  His work is even more prescient today as we struggle with what kind of a society to be.

Posted by Kate Tinnan, WRC volunteer

Domestic Violence: The Ultimate Pre-existing Condition

I just had to share this article from The Huffington Post. 

The practice being discussed here in this article is allowed to be practiced by insurance companies licensed in the state of North Carolina.  That practice: not covering victims of domestic violence because domestic violence is a "pre-existing condition".

We have all been watching the rancorous debate over whether or not our health care system should be reformed.  I am sure we all have opinions as to what should be done.  I am not going to use this forum to promote my personal ideas.

But one thing I am acutely aware of as a woman, in my reading about women's issues and from my relationship with the WRC in Hickory, is that women and particularly women with small children are at the short end of the stick when it comes to acquiring the benefits of living in a free society.

For example, we know that women generally earn $0.78 to every dollar a man earns.  We know that those women who work are less likely to have health benefits.  And when you add the children into the mix, you see women having less options for what kinds of jobs they can take because their children require that they be at home.   And for those women who are heading a single family household, i.e., they are "it" when it comes to keeping a roof over their heads and food on the table, it gets even more complicated with less options for sustainability.

So when I read an article about health insurance companies, one industry actually making hand over fist profits when people are losing their jobs and having their benefits cut at an alarming rate, determining that women who are victims of domestic abuse have a "pre-existing condition" and will not pay for the treatment of their wounds, I have to ask myself, "Who are these people who don't want health care reform?"  What kind of a country have we become when the mothers of our children not only have to sustain abuse from their partners, but cannot even get basic medical care for the physical injuries sustained from that abuse.

Can anyone explain why we put up with this - why we are even debating whether or not we need health care reform?  It makes me spit bullets....

Posted by Kate Tinnan, WRC volunteer