“Belly, you roll-eyed saint, cloud
of blood, coil of convulsing wire.”

“These are my feelings, learned within the home as well as public expectations.”

“I was seen as an exceptionally bright but difficult child rather than one with a treatable mental illness”

A journey through Dia de los Muertos in Patzcuaro, Michoacán, Mexico

“the director instructs: make your body
into a tree”

“This was goodbye to the tethers of repression and approval and virtue.”

“my body my own
temple of unapology”

“Let myself go on and rise from violation, from something stolen from me and my body”

“ring light as a moon!
don’t you dare declaw this bitch!”

“you took the word lesbian off the shelf and put it on”

“At what point do we move beyond redemption to condemnation?”

“I knew that the call was definitely not mine to make…”

“Liddy, you’re either going to be a scientist, a nurse, or a cold-blooded murderer.”

“These women make a stark parody of the exploitation of female sex”

“It’s been a minute. Two years, in fact.”

“dusk’s mussed-up sheaves curl for hours into the straw-plaited bylanes

of our old neighborhood.”

“used as a tool across race and time to create — and preserve — extreme social stratification”

“the time before I knew things could go so wrong”

“Bearing witness to the human condition… on a global scale.”

“Being around the people I care about makes me feel lonelier”