Sara Little
Bio
Writer and high school English teacher seeking to empower and inspire young creatives, especially of the LGBTQIA+ community
Stories (66)
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The Prayer of Khaled Joudeh, Age 9
Upon returning to school after the start of the New Year, I assigned my 10th grade students a reflection project in which they had to choose an image from the New York Times "Year in Pictures - 2023" and write a short poem that conveys the emotions and elements of the photo. I usually complete the assignments alongside my students, especially I am asking them to be vulnerable in their work. So, I began scrolling through the photos posted on the NYT website. When I got to the month of October, the intensity of the images increased exponentially as the majority of the photos were of the brutality of the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine. One image in particular cut my heart the deepest: A young boy in the Gaza Strip reaching to touch the cold forehead of his 8-month old baby sister as she lay wrapped in a blood-stained shroud. Samar Abu Elouf, an award-winning photojournalist for the New York Times, had taken the photo. She also had spoken to the boy and found out that his baby sister had been killed during an Israeli airstrike that had obliterated the building in which her family was sheltering. In addition to the loss of his sister, the boy's mother, father, and older brother also perished in the attack. As I gazed at the tragic scene, I heard the prayer of the young boy, now an orphan. A prayer and a lullaby wrapped in the salt of his grief.
By Sara Little8 months ago in Poets
"Gentlemen - ladies - I wash my hands of this madness". Content Warning.
To My “Beloved” Students, Congratulations! You’ve done it. You’ve finally broken me. I am officially resigning from my post as your glorified babysitter, unpaid therapist, personal Google, and the human embodiment of “Why do we even need to learn this?” Effective immediately (or earlier, if the urge to run screaming into the woods becomes too strong to resist), I am taking my red pens, my lesson plans, and the last shreds of my dignity (and sanity) and walking directly into the sunset. Or traffic. TBD.
By Sara Little8 months ago in Journal
Of Sage & Spice
Thanksgiving belongs to Momma. It is her best season, I believe; she thrives amongst the gold and amber and crimson as though she was spun from autumn itself—her laughter crisp as the leaves, her hands warm as spice. The kitchen becomes her stage, and she moves with practiced certainty, measuring by memory, tasting by instinct. Every year, the house glows with pride of the decorations she has set, and the heady aroma of butter, garlic, and sage wafts through the halls, accompanied by the steady rhythm of her best knife chopping celery. The meal is always a spectacular feast, but the real star is not the turkey; At my mother's table, the cornbread dressing is the hero rather than the sidekick. The recipe is hers alone, passed from my grandmother's hands to my mother's hands, and, finally, under Momma's watchful eyes, to mine. This past Thanksgiving, in a kitchen two thousand miles away from hers, I stood before a countertop of cooling cornbread and ground sage, trying to summon her magic from memory.
By Sara Little11 months ago in Feast
A Star in the Shadows
Yesterday was an unexpectedly emotional day. We went to Redlands for lunch and took a stroll through a large antique store downtown. As we made our way toward the exit, we passed several display cases filled with various collectibles. One caught our eye— memorabilia of some of our favorite childhood cartoons. But as we examined them, something else, much more somber, on the shelf below drew my attention.
By Sara Little12 months ago in History
