Home
Archives
About
Submit
Contact
A daily 1-minute thought.

A Man Without a Country: Susan Derrera


Excerpted from A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut, edited by Daniel Simon, and published by Seven Stories Press.

Contributed and read by Susan Alexander Derrera, a life-long Alaskan, born in Juneau in 1958. Susan is a poet, writer, and high school English teacher currently living in Anchorage with her husband Curtis, and their two children, Alexandra and Aidan.

A site Susan likes to visit daily: www.thehungersite.com

Kurt Vonnegut, in his final book, A Man Without a Country, urges the making of art:

"If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something."

How will you make your soul grow today?



Comments