Why We Chose It: "Shelter, in Place" by Sydney Tammarine
by Victoria Bosch-Murray, Reader
“Shelter, in Place” by Sydney Tammarine appears in the Summer 2023 issue of The Kenyon Review.
Why did we choose Sydney Tammarine’s essay “Shelter, in Place”? Because when all else fails, art saves. Art restores, enriches, soothes, challenges, and educates. This essay is an artistic education. It’s an emotional education. “Darshana throws her head back and laughs for the first time all winter,” writes Tammarine, “but off the walls of the classroom it sounds a little like a scream,” and when a laugh is confused with a scream, we as readers know we’re in violent territory. I won’t say “unscripted” because we’ve seen this again and again and again: America’s classrooms are violent. But this is from the teacher’s point of view. Not as heroic savior but as vulnerable participant and aesthetic observer.
Read the rest of the Why We Chose It here.
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