Vicissitudes Weekly
Transformation begins here. “Lots of girls fall in love with girls and boys fall in love with boys. Don’t they?” Kim Green’s Rain - from Vicissitudes This is the question that 9-year-old Rain asks her mother, Morgan, as she attempts to grasp the concept of homophobia. Neither Rain nor her mother can wrap their heads around it. This scene from Vicissitudes is the entry point to the discussion of unconditional love, which is one of the foundational themes of the novel. Their discussion arises because Morgan knows of her best friend, Rene’s, pain as she grapples with the death of Rene’s mother and the irreversible damage that her mother has caused her. Rene is a symbol of the broken-heartedness that comes from being disavowed by one’s own blood. Morgan struggles to explain the irrationality of hatred to a child who has never been a victim of the kind of conditional love that keeps people from living their truth. How do you teach your children about the mir...