I am hanging my little white head in shame. I'm trying to write this "updated folktale" for my fiction class, and it's based on an old Yiddish folktale that I am resetting on the South Side of Chicago. The adaptation is going quite well, but there's a part where I need this wise old grandmother character to tell a story within the story, and I can't get her voice for shit. So I actually emailed a sort-of-friend of mine from my magazine class who is a very decent writer and grew up on the south side and begged for help. From now on, you can call me Whitey McJew-Cracker. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go scorn people with any trace of melanin.