Good Life
THE BOSTON GLOBE, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2019
I need to understand what he
meant when he said he
doesn’t love me enough.
PAGE 5INSPIRATION
‘Humanhistory
becomesmoreandmore
aracebetween
educationand
catastrophe.’
H.G. WELLS
LOVE LETTERS
I
am caught between a cab and a crazy lady.
Over and over, a woman is smashing a taxi
door into me, but I can’t understand her rage.
In that moment, I don’t even feel the weight of
the door.
For a few seconds, I am outside of my body. I was
just trying to catch a cab in Paris.
The driver was a few steps ahead of me. As I made
my way to his car, a woman frantically ran toward us
across the street, from the opposite direction.
I was already at his car door, so I opened it. And be-
fore I could get safely inside, the door was crashing into
me.
I’d been in Paris for six days — my first European ad-
venture. I’d heard stories about traveling while black,
but France was everything I wanted it to be. “Bonjour,”
the natives greeted me everywhere I went. Each day, I
explored the cafes where James Baldwin wrote “Go Tell
It on the Mountain” and “Giovanni’s Room.” I found sol-
ace in the places he spent time, like Shakespeare and
Company.
Paris was his escape. And as I sipped hot chocolate in
the late of night on Paris sidewalks turned patios, I felt
peace. Jumping on the trampolines at the Tuileries with
a sisterfriend, hands way in the air, across the street
from the Louvre, I felt free. Even if it was fleeting, it was
freeing.
With my feet in the grass at Luxembourg Gardens, I
understood how this place became his home.
OSTERHELDT,PageInside
@LARGE
MICROAGGRESSION
THERAPY
The best prevention against
the spread of this trend is
listening to one another
PageSTYLE
FUCHSIAISIN
FASHION
The shocking shade works
from head to toe
PageBy Michael Andor Brodeur
GLOBE CORRESPONDENT
Hello Weekenders! I hope your
short week was as good as your long
weekend. And would you look at this:
Here we are again, perched on the edge
of not just another weekend, but a
whole season of events. Be sure to save
some room on the brunch table this
Sunday for our annual Fall Arts Pre-
view, which rakes together a veritable
giant heap of autumnal fun, just wait-
ing for you to dive in. The lawyers want
me to say “figuratively.”
Meanwhile, I don’t have my glasses,
so I can’t really tell you anything about
what’s happening beyond the weekend
right in front of us.
And on that front, it’s a big one. Real
quick, in the free-and-family-friendly
department, there’s a Lantern Festival
in Chinatown onSaturday; the Evolu-
tion of Hip-Hop showcase in Somer-
ville’s Union Square, also onSaturday;
and the Boston Arts Festival, marking
the launch of Open Studios season and
bringing over 70 artists and 50,000 vis-
itors to Christopher Columbus Water-
front Park onSaturdayandSunday.
I mean, you could stop there. But no
wait don’t! I have a lot more stuff. In-
cluding bees.
BEEMOVIE:Yes, I’m giving you lots
of bee warnings. Love, love,lovetheir
work, but they also need to stay away
from me. Which is why I’ll be in the
very back row near the door for “Hon-
eyland,” a “funny and wrenching” —
and dare I add buzzy? I do — new docu-
mentary about a Macedonian beekeep-
er that just scored four stars from
Globe film critic Ty Burr. “Few movies
capture the great wheel of nature turn-
ing with as much beauty and empathy
as ‘Honeyland,’ and fewer still show
how easily the wheel can slip its track
and come crashing to pieces.” At once
“depressing and full of wonders,” it’s a
must-see for the weekend. Besides,
have you ever tried honey on popcorn?
(Not recommended at all.)Nowscreen-
ing.
JAZZODYSSEY:If you prefer your
honey in the horn, Globe critic Mark
Feeney recommends “Blue Note Re-
cords: Beyond the Notes” to the tune of
three stars. Sophie Huber’s “briskly rev-
erential” documentary (that's right,two
documentaries this week because this
WEEKENDER,PageJeneé Osterheldt
Black, American, and abroad? Racism travels free.
PRUDTINAI — STOCK.ADOBE
.COM
By Daneet Steffens
GLOBE CORRESPONDENT
In the 34 years since its publica-
tion, Margaret Atwood’s “The Hand-
maid’s Tale” has become a literary
and political juggernaut.
The dystopian novel — depicting
a theocratic regime headquartered
in Cambridge — has been translated
into more than 40 languages and
made into a film, a ballet, an opera,
a television series, and a graphic
novel. And around the globe, the
handmaids’ red dresses and whitebonnets can be seen donned by pro-
testers at demonstrations against
forced-birth and other regressive leg-
islation around the world (along
with signs that read “Make Margaret
Atwood fiction again!”).
On Sept. 10, the sequel arrives.
“The Testaments” picks up 15 years
after “The Handmaid’s Tale” ends. It
turns out that not only were a multi-
tude of readers wondering what hap-
pened after the conclusion of the
original novel, but, happily enough,
so was Atwood.“I only ever write novels about
things that I don’t know,” she says
via phone. “When I first started ‘The
Testaments,’ things had changed:
For a while, we were going away
from ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’ but now
we’re going towards it. In real life.
And in real life, totalitarianisms
don’t last forever, but they end in dif-
ferent ways. We were told in ‘Hand-
maid’s Tale’ that Gilead ended, but
we weren’t told how. I was interested
in the how: I wanted to explore the
possibilities of how it might end —or how it might have begun to end.”
The narrative of “The Testa-
ments” — as powerful, revealing,
and engaging as that of “Handmaid’s
Tale” — is shared by three women:
Lydia, the formidable Aunt, well-
known from both the earlier novel
and the TV series; Daisy, a head-
strong young woman living in To-
ronto; and Agnes, the daughter of a
Commander, destined to become the
wife of another Commander.
Through Lydia’s tale we gain new
ATWOOD,PageLIAM SHARP
A return to
Gilead, and a
call to action
Margaret Atwood, the author of ‘The
Handmaid’s Tale,’ offers another powerful
dystopian story in ‘The Testaments’
‘When I first started
“The Testaments,”
things had changed:
For a while, we were
going away from “The
Handmaid’s Tale,” but
now we’re going
towards it.’
MARGARET ATWOOD
THE WEEKENDER
Hard bops, soft fruits, honeybees, and ‘Donkey Show’
LJUBO STEFANOV
Hatidze Muratova, in “Honeyland,” a documentary about the Mace-
donian beekeeper that scored four stars from Globe film critic Ty Burr.RELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws