On Sandra Bland

I usually do not speak about things like police brutality except in private. I have kind of felt like, who is going to listen to anything I have to say about this? And of course, I have had concerns about becoming a target myself. Sandra Bland, for example, used to speak out about police brutality. But when I heard her story and saw her arrest in Texas on YouTube, I broke down and cried. It was in December 2015 when I really stopped to take notice of this case. Around my birthday. Something had happened in the news and I googled her and found the story in full and I could not believe it.

She looked like my friend Julie. From high school. She reminded me of myself. And I cried and cried and cried. And then I thought "what good are your tears? What are you doing to help to change the world in which you live?"

Of course, I still felt that there was nothing I could do and that I have no power and so on. But I sat down anyway and I wrote A Girl Named Sandy. Even after I wrote it, I still felt like it was nothing. But one time, I assigned it to some university students in Paris for an end of term project (Can you believe I was a professor in a university??) and the papers I got back were really astonishing and humbling. And so I started to think maybe the book is not total garbage. Maybe the point I tried to make makes sense to some people.

You be the judge