Five Star Friday's 161st Edition Is Brought to You By Martin Luther King, Jr.

This week's Five Star Friday is brought to you by racism, infidelity, more racism, riots in England, relationship violence, ridiculous advice for mothers, even more racism, a book tour, heartless politics, the power of personal blogging, old people, good pie, a funeral, and Martin Luther King, Jr.:

Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.
     — Martin Luther King, Jr.

Grab a cup of coffee, set your workday to cruise, and enjoy some of this week's best weblog entries.

Happy Friday!

"This Is Not Really About Cake" from Mocha Momma:

Keep talking about cake in the vacuum of mostly white communities. You’ve proven the old proverb wrong. Eat your cake, people. Down it to the last crumb. Tomorrow, you can have it again. Trust me. It will still be there. The racism, that is.

We can talk about race in a real way or we can talk about cake. I’m choosing the former.

"Survival of the Fittest" from Queen of Spain

"The Sandwich Bag" from Ministry So Fabulous!

"DEAR SUGAR, The Rumpus Advice Column #81: A Bit of Sully in Your Sweet" by Sugar at The Rumpus:

The woman who sent him the postcard pushed us down a path where we made ourselves ready, not to be a perfect couple, but to be a couple who knows how to have a duel when a duel needs to be had and emerge from it, hand-in-hand.

I hope that’s what you get too, Happily Ever After. A bit of sully in your sweet. Not perfection, but real love. Not what you imagine, but what you’d never dream.

"The Things About Divorce Nobody Ever Tells You" from All About Avacakes

"Sniffing Dirty Laundry: A True Story from "The Help's" Daughter" from Before Barack...

"I Was Born Inside the Movie of My Life" from Roger Ebert's Journal:

The blog let loose the flood of memories. Told sometimes that I should write my memoirs, I failed to see how I possibly could. I had memories, I had lived a good life in an interesting time, but I was at a loss to see how I could organize the accumulation of a lifetime. It was the blog that taught me how. It pushed me into first- person confession, it insisted on the personal, it seemed to organize itself in manageable fragments. Some of these words, since rewritten and expanded, first appeared in blog forms. Most are here for the first time. They came pouring forth in a flood of relief.

"Letter from London by Bee Lavender" from Hipmama.com

"Let's Talk About Race" from ...And They Called Me Freak

"Antique Eyes" from Amy Turn Sharp:

...I am older now. I am old enough that I can notice youth. I saw it all around me in the bars of my old university town. I felt myself reverting to type. I am the most popular girl in the room. I started using my humor and red lipstick. I was relieved to find myself not yet invisible. I could hold a gaze. I was interesting and charm fell out of my body and filled the bar. You could almost drown in it. I called my husband and he laughed at me when I told him that my friends and I got hit on by old men and ex convicts. I told him that we had to do the old "pour the shots on the floor" trick because there were too many being passed to us. He told me to get home soon. I pushed my body up against his and I could tell I wasn't old to him. I could feel it as soon as my dress hit the floor. It sounded like an ache that made a noise.

Trigger warning:
"'I Can Handle It': On Relationship Violence, Independence, and Capability" by Autumn Whitefield-Madrano at Feministe

"The Beckyville Chronicles: Down and Out in New Orleans" from Escape from Beckyville

"Pie" from bighappyfunhouse:

Then a terrible thing happened. One day the pies stopped. I don't know if my mom finally rebuked Sam the Pieman or if he found another love interest. It was a week of waiting for a pie that never arrived. A week of hell. No pie. It was as if you were excommunicated from church. The church of pie. The golden flow of pie had ceased to be.

"Thoughtful, Timeless Advice from 'Working Mother' Magazine" from All & Sundry

"New Family Lore" from Awkwardly Social

Please come back and share good writing with us over the coming week to be featured on the next Five Star Friday. If you have read a really good piece on someone else's weblog, submit it by Thursday at midnight CST to have it featured on Five Star Friday.

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Comments

[slouchy]

The Sniffing Dirty Laundry piece is phenomenal, as is Ebert's. Wow. Thanks, as always, for compiling these.

[Kristin]

Wow so much amazing writing. I really love Ebert's piece.

How do we go about sharing a piece with you if we're interested in having it featured?

[schmutzie]

Kristin, submit a post's url to @FiveStarFriday on Twitter. No self-submissions. Check out the submission guidelines here: http://www.schmutzie.com/submit-an-entry/

[deborah quinn]

This five-star Friday collection warrants at LEAST ten stars. Whew. Some hellaciously good reading there. And people say that reading is dead b/c of the internet. HAHAHAHA
Really brilliant stuff here. Thanks for collecting it.

[Suebob]

This week's is especially stellar!

[Erin]

Humbled to be with this group. Thank you