True, from dark-skinned sources have come those slave songs based on protestant hymns and biblical texts known as the spirituals, work songs and secular songs of sorrow and tough luck known as the blues, that outgrowth of ragtime known as jazz (in the development of which whites have assisted), and the charleston, an eccentric dance invented by the gamins around the public market-place in charleston, s. c. no one can or does deny this. but these are contributions of a caste in a certain section of the country. they are foreign to northern negroes, west indian negroes, and african negroes. what was schuyler's intended meaning in the statement?

comfort   in their suffering

hi i can if you'd like

when connie willis was 12 years old, her mother died. in january of 2003, willis was interviewed for locus magazine. she recognized that death is a major issue in her writing, specially because the vacuous and appalling things that people tend to say in order to support you when someone you loved dies.

but there is another aspect that i have learned from connie willis's quote. in his famous work "danubio", the italian writer claudio magris describes literature as house removals. some messages reach us, other messages get lost in the labyrinth. those messages which are our inheritance teach us how to live and how to die, how to love and how to hate, how to laugh and how to cry. i think that tales really shape us if we listen to them. maybe through the stories we read we learn how to emphatize with others, knowing that the bells tolls for every each of us.

how am i supposed to know i dont see what you see ive seen a bunch of these