ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPH:

“I chose this picture because it's the most valuable picture in our family collection. This is my mother sitting on the chop block, and in the family, this picture is called the chop block Madonna. The child is me at the age of four months. Part of my mother's role with her nine children who, whose father died just after this picture was taken, was to remind us that the winter is long and dark, but it's going to be over. We were very poor. We were subsistence farmers essentially. And would sometimes run out of food before winter was over. But somehow we got through. You can see that even though it's a cloudy day, in February, there is some light, and pretty soon the birds are going to be singing again. There will be an end to whatever misery we're experiencing now. And life will be better. And so to me, the idea of the light that she brought to this world is also the words of hope. So light and words are related to each other. And light is related to hope. And hope is what we needed.”