The Writers Foundry Welcomes Karen Good Marable ‘16

August 05, 2016

The Writers Foundry at St. Joseph’s College (SJC) is pleased to announce that recent graduate Karen Good Marable '16 was selected as the feature essayist in a recent issue of The New Yorker magazine. Her article, “Remembering Sandra Bland’s Death in the Place I Call Home,” was published in its July 13 issue.

“Karen is a writer of range and depth; as an essayist she excavates the tiny gesture to reveal the complexity of our species,” said Jackson Taylor, director of The Writers Foundry at SJC. “As a poet, her uncanny sensitivity brings impeccable deliberation and nuanced choice to both syntax and structure. This care conveys her commitment to historical truth and to the oath of accuracy that literature's best and most reliable witnesses uphold.”   

In this article, Marable writes about how a visit to her hometown of Prairie View, Texas coincided with the death of Sandra Bland, a woman who died in police custody after a traffic stop. Marable tells the reader about her home town, describes her experiences as a woman of color in the South, and discusses the life of Sandra Bland and how Bland’s emerging views and activism were cut short after her encounter with a white police officer. These events bring Marable to think of her own daughter and the challenges that she faces in raising her, including how to tell of the historical experience of African-Americans, how to keep hope in the face of persistent injustice, and how no matter what she teaches her daughter, it may not be enough in the face of a police officer who refuses to acknowledge her humanity.

Karen Good Marable '16 is a writer and editor who currently resides in Brooklyn. Originally from Prairie View, TX, Good Marable graduated from Howard University and was a member of the inaugural graduating class of The Writers Foundry at St. Joseph’s College. She is currently working on a collection of poems and essays and lives with her husband, daughter, and stepson.