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The Catholic Imagination in 2022

Jessica Hooten Wilson

About a decade ago, a debate occurred in the public intellectual sphere between Dana Gioia, Paul Elie, Gregory Wolfe, and Randy Boyagoda on whether the Catholic imagination that so...

The Exile of a Moment

Jessica Hooten Wilson

Clouds like ice broken on the surface of a lake,Shifting forms of Pangaea that gravitate towards the sun,Light rising bright impenetrable and distant. I wait with ease in the...

The night my friend confessed her sins over the phone

Jessica Hooten Wilson

She told me that she wanted to be holyBut everything she saidSounded like she wanted to be happy.And I wanted to cryAnd shout out the difference.But I couldn’t find...

O’Connor and Race

Jessica Hooten Wilson

Radical Ambivalence: Race in Flannery O’Connorby angela alaimo o’donnell fordham, 192 pages, $30 In 1974, ten years after Flannery O’Connor died, Alice Walker visited O’Connor’s farm in Georgia. It...

How Flannery O’Connor Fought Racism

Jessica Hooten Wilson

In a recent New Yorker essay, Paul Elie asks, “How Racist Was Flannery O’Connor?” His headline aims to be incendiary, to rile people up, to give us a scapegoat...