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Kirsten Denker

Writer, copy editor, book lover 

The New Republic •

Chasing Jane Austen’s Bad Boys

My first literary crush, as a preadolescent, was on Edward Fairfax Rochester, the sarcastic, beetle-browed hero of Jane Eyre, who formed my early beau ideal of what a romantic partner would be. Decades later, rereading Charlotte Bronte’s novel, I was taken aback to rediscover the scene where Rochester dresses up as a palm-reading “old crone” in a bonnet and cape and creepily questions Jane on her love life. Strange dude! Romantic archetypes in literature, argues English professor Rachel Feder in...
The New Republic •

Deborah Levy’s Luminous Investigation of Female Ambition

In The Cost of Living, the second book in Deborah Levy’s memoir trilogy, a child haunts the author’s dream, appearing barefoot in the large Victorian home Levy shared with her husband and two daughters in London. The child smells of “plants that have grown in the African soil,” and as she joins Levy’s English girls on the sofa to watch The Great British Bake Off, Levy looks on warily, conscious that this child has known political upheaval that would rock her children’s easy lives. Levy’s husband
The New Republic •

The Education of Greta Thunberg

One Christmas, I bought my parents compact-fluorescent light bulbs and a copy of Global Warming: A Greenpeace Guide. It was 1990: I was proud of my job at Greenpeace U.K., on the climate team, and the task of explaining to my puzzled family that the planet was in crisis seemed as urgent as the one we faced at work every day, trying to convince the British public. The question of how to tackle climate change—chain ourselves to backhoe loaders? Kick-start a solar revolution?—was one that tore Gree
Washington Spectator •

Copy editing: Reflections on the 50th Anniversary of the End of the Vietnam War

The war that we called the Vietnam War and the Vietnamese on the other side called the American War (to distinguish it from the French War they had fought for 10 years and those against the invaders from the north they had fought for several thousand years) ended on April 30, 1975, on the occurrence that we and the Vietnamese who were our allies called the Fall of Sài Gòn, when soldiers of the People’s Army of Việt Nam took control of the capital city of what was then the Republic of Việt Nam, r...
Prospect Heights-Crown Heights, NY Patch •

Gardening School

On a recent Saturday, I helped build a new "outdoor classroom" at my son's school, PS 9. When I volunteered, I pictured myself shoveling dirt in a t-shirt under one of those bright skies that whispered of summer the previous week. Instead, there was a biting wind, drizzle and, at one point, actual snowflakes.

But I was pleased to join in. Because I returned to full-time work a few months ago, I haven't spent so much time at PS9 recently, and I hadn't heard about the plans to build an outdoor cl
Prospect Heights-Crown Heights, NY Patch •

Notes from the Underhill: Back to Work

Just recently I returned to the workforce. I was going to say "went back to work," but that phrase isn't really accurate. No one who stays home with small children—which is what I've been doing the past few years—actually stops working. It's just that you don't need a Metrocard, you get no lunch break and your boss only comes up to your knee.

My miniature line-manager was promoted to full days at preschool this year and it was time for me to start earning a paycheck. So I set out into that fore
Prospect Heights-Crown Heights, NY Patch •

Water, Water Everywhere

It was pouring yesterday when I scurried down Underhill to pick up my six-year-old from school. My little one had fallen asleep in her stroller under the plastic cover, so a friend offered to watch her while I darted in to the auditorium to collect her brother. In the lobby, though, our principal, Ms D'Avilar, was directing traffic:

"Second graders are in the gym!" she said, catching sight of me.

The rain, it turned out, had flooded the basement, forcing the pre-K and Kindergarteners—who are u
Prospect Heights-Crown Heights, NY Patch •

Roam Free

We just returned from two weeks in the Catskills.

"What was your favorite thing about our vacation?" I heard my husband ask our six-year-old the morning after we got back.

"We could go wherever we wanted!"

By "we", he meant his three-year-old sister and himself. It was true—they'd been able to wander Croc-less in the grass, collecting pine cones, picking clover flowers, and climbing neighboring stoops to call through the screen doors of kids they had newly befriended.

We'd rented a cottage a
Prospect Heights-Crown Heights, NY Patch •

Notes From the Underhill: Learner Mom

This morning I took my road test.

Let me explain: I'm old enough to have been driving for a quarter of a century but never have. My first question, when I started lessons recently, was: "Which one's the brake?"

Many people think it's highly eccentric not to drive—especially once you become a parent—but in New York (and in London, where I come from) there are many actual documented cases of people with kids but no licence. My mother-in-law, who lives a block away from us, raised three well-roun
Prospect Heights-Crown Heights, NY Patch •

Posses, Pokemon, and the Nature of Boyhood at Underhill Playground

One afternoon at the Underhill this week my son's posse came running up to me: "Ben's Mom: Ben's hurt!" Ben's posse consisted, that moment, of Rajiv and Julian, two friends from his first-grade class at P.S. 9. I found Ben over by the bronze duck sprinkler—drenched, very upset but physically intact.

"That kid punched me," he told me. "He punched me again and again and wouldn't stop!"

He pointed at a boy I recognized from another class.

"What happened? Why did he punch you?" I asked.

"Well, I