Article About Writing Stones, Published by San Francisco Book Review
by Jeanie Kortum
Kenya, 1984. I first knew the cutting was close when the sun rose and the young girl who had been dancing all night, bleating through a whistle, was dragged across the clearing by an old woman and lowered to the ground. All around her, women fell to the ground, emitting strange cries. The old woman held a piece of glass in her hand. The men sitting around the fire drinking from large calabasas, turned away.
The whistle in the young girl’s mouth was replaced with a stick so that she would not cry out and curse the ceremony.
When the cutting happened it was quick, grubby and gynecologically matter of fact. The old woman turned and dropped the clitoris onto a leaf. The stick had worked. Though the little girl’s legs were shaking and her eyes leaked tears, she hadn’t cried out.
When I went to visit her a little later someone had piled a small hill of maize on her wound. Transfixed, I watched as small tributaries of blood leaked into the white flour.
That morning, as if I too had a stick in my mouth, I withdrew into the comfortable objectivity of North American scrutiny: I too did not cry out. For thirty years I have carried the shame of that moment, whatever I could have done to stop the proceedings, sealed forever in the resin of my silence.
It had begun as a brave dream. I was going to do a series of books about endangered cultures. To research the first, I dogsledded to a village at the top of the world in Greenland and lived with the Inuit. That book easily sped out of me. To research the second I lived with a hunter-gatherer tribe, then went back for a second year with them and witnessed the clitoridectomy. [Read the whole article here]
Ghost Vision
by Jeanie Kortum
Jeanie's first book, Ghost Vision, was a novel narrating an adventure she had with her friend Therese Kristenson. Therese is a Danish marine biologist who studied in Greenland. She and Jeanie traveled by dogsled to the village at the top of the world where they lived with the Inuit. Traveling back they got caught in a terrible storm which broke up the ice they were traveling across, pushing them out to the sea. That experience became the genesis for Ghost Vision. Learn more and order the book at Amazon.com.
Crystal: A Memoir
by Jeanie Kortum
Narrative Magazine, Winter 2009
The little girl who would eventually become my daughter was only four years old when I met her, living on one of the meanest streets in San Francisco. Her name should have given me a clue. Crystal. Refracted light. She had a voice that scratched the sky, powder white legs, loved the color pink, and walked the streets as if she owned them, greeting every single drug dealer by name. Her older sister, Charmaine, age five, was more tentative, large doe eyes, given to sudden storms of tears. They lived on the street corner opposite the Kok Pit Bar, mom a prostitute and heroin addict... [MORE]
Stones: A Short Story
by Jeanie Kortum
Narrative, Spring 2008 (Winner of the Million Writers Award)
Face press against the window of my cab. I see a nose, the camouflage pattern of uniforms, the sharp glint of a gun. Soldiers, I think, and curl my hand tightly around the handle of my suitcase. More men move behind the cab. They begin to speak in a jagged language, almost foreign to me after my two years living in America. A soldier shines a flashlight through the window. Its beam snakes across the shabby upholstery, touches my face, then travels on to the back of the taxi driver’s head... [MORE]
At Home With the Horizon
by Jeanie Kortum
Cover Story, SF Chronicle Sunday Magazine, December 11, 2005
Diana is clinging to my neck, squeezing so hard I can barely breathe. “I don’t wanna go,” she cries, inches from my ear. “Don’t let them take me.” The three cops clench and unclench their hands at their sides. They look embarrassed. Diana’s father yells at his kids: “Run!” he tells them. “If they get you I’ll never see you again.” It’s the first time I’ve understood the expression “foaming at the mouth...” [MORE]
Adoption: Essay
by Jeanie Kortum
Borderless Magazine, July 2021
He begins speaking the moment he enters the room. “I had to crawl under the bed and call 911 when my daddy was hitting my mommy,” Jeremy announces. Skin as brown as California hills in summer, a quick bright smile despite what he has just announced. He examines us.“I’ve been waiting for a mommy and a daddy for a long time,” he confides. “I told my social worker I wanted parents who would love me, I wanted to be read to at night and I wanted a teddy bear and a nightlight.” Jeremy lays out a row of miniature toy cups. “Would you like a cup of coffee?” he asks.... [MORE]
Oxford Presentation
by Jeanie Kortum
March 7, 2015
On March 7, 2015, we arrived at Lady Margaret Hall in Oxford, England; different races, different colors, of varied educational backgrounds, we gathered to address FGM. Lawyers, doctors, writers and artists, we represented many fields, pulled like spores of hope into the province of dreams and action……………. [MORE]
The Pandemic, Murder, Cannibalism and Me: Essay
by Jeanie Kortum
The Smart Set Magazine, November 4, 2021
The deaths of half a million people. A year spent in isolation, living on crackers and popcorn that Amazon delivered, wearing the same two dresses day after day. Because I never left the house, squirrels began to make nests in the engine of my car. Relationships dropped away. I watched endless Scandinavian crime shows, became lazier and lazier. Dust moats grew in the corner of each room in the house; soon it was like living in the sleeve of a mohair sweater... [MORE]
Alice Walker reposted this article. Check out the link below
White History – Alice Walker | The Official Website for American Novelist & Poet
https://alicewalkersgarden.com/blogs-by-topic/other-peoples-books-films-music-ideas/white-history/
The last home
by Jeanie Kortum
North Coaster, Fall 2023
Who’s to say what pulls you back to a piece of land? For 20 years, my husband and I have returned to a small meadow we call Dream Farm overlooking the bay in Inverness.
Dream Farm. The name almost a poem.
We first saw the land on a windy day when we were just beginning our love affair. We liked it because it reminded him of Ireland, I liked it because it was introspective.... [MORE]