I bought The Fact of a Body after hearing about it on the Literary Disco podcast*. My plan had been to give it my dad for Christmas. Once it arrived, I became so intrigued, I ended up keeping it for myself.
I’ll start by saying that many researchers who write non-fiction are not great writers. That is not the case with Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich. I was immediately drawn in and found myself wanting to underline creative imagery or interesting turn of phrase again and again. When has that ever happened reading non-fiction?
Subtitled …

This book changed the way I think of God’s love.
For someone who has been a Christian as long as I have, and for someone who clings as heavily as I do to my Reformed theology, that’s saying something. But this book put a big ol’ spotlight on my “doctrine” and showed me just how works-based my faith is. Again, that’s saying something.
I’m not sure why it took me so many years to read it – it is far from a new book. In fact, in just a few more years, …

Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community is the last book Martin Luther King, Jr. penned before his assassination in 1968. It’s a series of essays in which Dr. King addresses the status of the Civil Rights movement, its progress, what has held it back and what he believes it will take to move it forward.
While it was written 50 years ago, I am stunned by how much of his writing is 100% relevant today. Not just because we have much yet to accomplish in the realm of race relations, but …

October is Fair Trade month!
When I posted about justice earlier this year, I said that one of the points made to me was, if you want to work for justice, find ways to incorporate it into your current life. Justice feels like such a big issue, that big action is necessary. This isn’t possible for me right now, but small actions are.
So, I’m celebrating the small actions.
For me, this has meant incorporating Fair Trade products into my life when and where I can. Fair Trade means that the farmers and workers …

Years before I heard Beth Cossin talk about human trafficking and the prevalence of it in nail salons, I contemplated the business viability of my favorite local nail salon. Here’s my question: I pay $20 for a manicure with gel nails and about $25 for a pedicure. Each service takes about an hour. When you consider deducting expenses, does this allow a sustainable margin? Is the salon making enough to adequately pay the person doing my nails?
Earlier this month New York Times published two pieces on the topic here and here. The journalist …

A few years ago I blogged about a short film called The Candy Shop. Whitestone Motion Pictures wrote and created the film – a fairy tale-style storytelling of the all too prevalent sex-trafficking industry. At that time, I vowed to get involved, to do something, but I didn’t.
Fast forward more than four years, and I had a chance to re-immerse myself in the cause as well as learn about some others at the Wesleyan Women’s ALIVE 2015 conference. In one of the breakout sessions, Elizabeth Holmes accurately described what had been my experience with …