Danielle Jackson

2 weeks ago | theparisreview.org | Danielle Jackson

By Danielle A. Jackson April 25, 2025 Fish Tales, first published in 1983, is a novel told in short, vivid vignettes. A woman named Lewis comes of age hardscrabble in early sixties Detroit. It was a difficult time to be born a girl. Teachers slept with students without consequence; an unexpected pregnancy meant you could be expelled. Secrets and illegal abortions, it seemed, were the best ways for a girl to hold onto her pride.

2 months ago | theatlantic.com | Danielle Jackson

In 1778, during the Revolutionary War, the British captured Savannah, Georgia, as part of a “Southern Strategy” that aimed to rally support from Loyalists in the region. The following year, after Patriot forces allied with the French, some 4,000 soldiers from France and its colonies sailed to North America to help take back the city.

Sep 8, 2024 | theatlantic.com | Danielle Jackson

When the critic Janet Malcolm set aside a biography of Sylvia Plath and began reading a memoir about the author instead, she felt as if she “had been freed from prison.” The writing in the biography, Bitter Fame, by Anne Stevenson, had been “by far the most intelligent” of the published Plath biographies at the time, but the conventions of the form, its “hushed cautiousness, the solemn weighing of ‘evidence,’” could stifle even the most effervescent talent.

Jun 3, 2024 | oxfordamerican.org | Danielle Jackson

I had a great-uncle who walked to church every Sunday, even though he owned more than one car and a fleet of trucks for his weekday work. I called him Uncle. His head was bald: smooth and dark brown. He wore lace-up Stacy Adams that were newly polished and clutched a leather-bound Bible close to his chest. His suit, earth-toned and custom-made, showed flecks of mahogany when he sat in the deacons’ row.

Mar 25, 2024 | theatlantic.com | Danielle Jackson

Like so many others, I first watched him speak on the night of the 2004 Democratic convention, the year John Kerry became the nominee. He was still a state senator then, his face unlined, his head full of dark-brown hair. He humbly told the audience that his presence there was “pretty unlikely.” His Kenyan father had grown up herding goats; his paternal grandfather cooked for a British soldier. In a Baptist cadence, he quoted from the Declaration of Independence.