Image from istockphoto.com by Alan Crosthwaite copyright 2007 Confession: During each U.S. congressional showdown it feels as if we the people, the masses are simply collateral damage in the wake of the warring parties' legislative destruction. The politicians who refer most often to the U.S. Constitution act in ways that undermine its intent to avoid tyranny, oligarchy, and plutocracy. Today's 21st-century United States doesn't feel like a democracy. BATAF: Politicians will ultimately make the wisest decisions for the country because doing so is in their own best interests.

Confession: During my childhood, rainy days meant reading randomly chosen articles from the World Book and Encyclopaedia Britannica sets that my parents had bought for me. Having them so easily accessible made me feel as if everything worth knowing was within my reach. BATAF: Physical books are obsolete.

Be f r e e !       Confession:  Seeing footage of the Freedom Riders and other non-violent Civil Rights volunteers as they're taunted, beaten, hosed, attacked by police dogs, and arrested makes me grateful to have been born after 1965. The depth of their faith, commitment, and endurance is beyond my ability to comprehend fully. I doubt that I would have been that brave.   BATAF: Each generation is on its own. 

Image from offthebeatenpanel.com, artist: Suso, copyright 1974.  Victims r eprinted by Eternity Comics 1988 Confession : The tough Black girls on the covers of urban romances look incomplete. Their bold stares challenge their observers, but where's the tenderness and vulnerability that's the standard for mainstream romance covers?   BATAF: Authentic Black girls are hood rats, tough girls or ride-or-die chicks.

Confession: When some people insist that white is every color rolled into one without making the distinction between light and pigment, it reminds me of layering all my crayon colors into the center of the page to create one dark spot that fascinated me as a young child. Since my extended family members' complexions spanned the range of freckled pale to deepest dark, being called Black felt accurate and inclusive.      Through my child's literal interpretation filter, I wondered why White people with skin the same pale shades as some of my kin were called the same name as my crayon with no color.      As an adult, reading descriptions of pale, milky white skin makes me wonder if the character is a mime, a Goth, a ghost or a clown. Even albino people are pinkish. BATAF: Absence of color equals purity.     

Age Weight Do-ability Fertility Sexual Virtue Relationship Status       Confession: Women's fiction that reinforces entrenched, narrowly defined ideas of what makes women desirable and worthy of courtesy, respect, love feels archaic. It reads as if the authors haven't been paying attention to the fact that it's normal for girls and women to pursue their intellectual, academic, and professional interests as primary goals, not just as hobbies until they become girlfriends, wives, and mothers.     BATAF: Professionally ambitious women want to be men. 

Image from anatomyatlases.org Confession: Cover art that features scantily clad or naked people is a turnoff even though reading romances and erotica is one of my favorite non-food indulgences. Let me imagine how the characters look without imposing upon my visualization through cover art that often contradicts the text descriptions in the story. BATAF : Women with seriously curvy bodies are abnormal.