Book Review: ’The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit’

Jobs, Journalism, Justice

Susan Storer Clark is a contributor and writing coach for Real Change. A former broadcast journalist, she is currently at work on her second novel.

Articles by Susan Storer Clark

Drawing of bearded Black man standing in front of a house, the left side of which shows boarded-up windows and a chain-link fence, while the right side is well maintained with a hanging plant and a white picket fence

LANDING BACK HOME: ‘Shelter’ gives a professor a chance to reflect on history, familial and national

By Susan Storer Clark | February 8, 2023

BOOK REVIEW: ‘Shelter: A Black Tale of Homeland, Baltimore’ By Lawrence Jackson | 2022 by Greywolf Press | Nonfiction, memoir | Available at the Seattle Public Library

Baltimore is a complicated city.

Lawrence Jackson knows how complicated Baltimore is better than most people. His family has lived in the city for five generations. Since colonial times, Baltimore has been noted for the elegance of its architecture and the refinement of its manufactured silver. One of its nicknames is Charm City. Another is Mob Town, given in the 1800s, when strife often erupted in riots.

Baltimore is especially complicated if you’re Black. It’s even more complicated if you want to build wealth for your descendants through owning your own home. ...

In memoriam: Blas Andrés Felix

By Susan Storer Clark | January 23, 2023

Longtime Real Change vendor and activist Blas Andrés Felix has died. According to posts by his friends on Facebook, he was taken off life support on Christmas Day, Dec. 25, and died a few hours later. ...

Fostering a sense of hope: Memoir of childhood homelessness contains a life-changing challenge

By Susan Storer Clark | November 16, 2022

BOOK REVIEW: ‘A Place Called Home: A Memoir’ By David Ambroz | 2022 | Hardcover, $30 | Nonfiction, memoir | Available at the Seattle Public Library

In his memoir “A Place Called Home,” David Ambroz doesn’t really write much about a place he could call home. Instead, the focus is on different places he ended up living: shelters, temporary apartments, the foster system, the juvenile facility he was put in just because authorities couldn’t find him a home. ...

Photograph of entrance panel to exhibit about Walt Disney and World War II, showing Donald Duck hanging from the body of a fighter plane

When Disney went to war: The Museum of Flight exhibit opens eyes to animators’ integral role in WWII mobilization

By Susan Storer Clark | October 12, 2022

On Dec. 7, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Naval Air Service bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawai‘i. Early the next day, before Congress had formally declared war, Walt Disney received a phone call at his home informing him that an anti-aircraft battalion was taking over facilities at The Walt Disney Studios. By the end of the week, Disney had a contract with the U.S. Navy to produce training films. ...

A photo of suffragettes posing on the steps of the White House.

Girlboss, gaslight, gatekeep: History book questions assumptions and reveals racist underpinnings of feminist progress

By Susan Storer Clark | August 3, 2022

BOOK REVIEW: ‘The Trouble with White Women: A Counterhistory of Feminism’ By Kyla Schuller | 2021 | Hardcover, $30 | Nonfiction, history | Available at the Seattle Public Library

“SISTER! Your foot’s smaller, but it’s still on my neck.”

— “Have You Ever Tried to Hide” by Pat Parker ...

Necessary dispute: Essay collection teaches the value of avoiding compromise

By Susan Storer Clark | June 22, 2022

BOOK REVIEW: ‘On Compromise: Art, Politics, and the Fate of the American Ideal’ By Rachel Greenwald Smith | 2021 | Paperback, $16 | Nonfiction, politics | Available at the Seattle Public Library

From the beginning of “On Compromise: Art, Politics, and the Fate of an American Ideal,” a collection of essays by Rachel Greenwald Smith, it’s clear what she thinks of compromise.

She’s against it.

Mostly.

Smith does make it obvious that she’s not against everyday domestic compromises, such as when people take turns doing the chores nobody likes. It’s political compromise she finds objectionable, especially the tendency she sees in center-left Americans to see compromise as an idea in itself and an end rather than a means. ...

Malachi and Monique Lightfoot, photo by Jon Williams

Vendors Malachi and Monique Lightfoot surpass sales record

By Susan Storer Clark | March 20, 2019

Malachi and Monique Lightfoot have been Real Change vendors for just a short time, but they’ve already set a new sales record. They became vendors in January of this year, and in February Monique sold 245 and Malachi sold an impressive 1,681 papers. There’s no mystery or magic to the way they did it, but there is a story. ...

Illustration by Jon Williams, Real Change

Book Review: ’Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice’

By Susan Storer Clark | April 11, 2018

In its fourth edition, Paul Kivel's ‘Uprooting Racism’ is still a useful tool for change

“Uprooting Racism” is not a pleasant read for a White person. But stick with it, because the book provides a clearly written analysis of the institutional racism in our society and the damage it creates, then gives a series of simple exercises and practical strategies for dealing with it. Author Paul Kivel acknowledges that many White people find it difficult to read about racism, saying that we need to keep going back to the task of confronting and uprooting it, no matter how uncomfortable, angry or frustrated we become in the process. ...

Book Review: ’Street Farm: Growing Food, Jobs, and Hope on the Urban Frontier’

By Susan Storer Clark | September 20, 2017

Sole Food Farms cofounder is working to grow farmers in the city

Dig deep! This farmer and activist has some radical ideas.

You might flip through this attractive volume in a bookstore. It has lots of colorful, glossy photos of beaming people of varying ethnicities tending lettuce and holding huge bunches of brilliant beets. You’d probably notice tomatoes and peppers glowing in their market boxes. ...