Books
Who gets to speak and why...is the only question
Chris Kraus, I Love Dick
"You will find this, perhaps, an over-intellectualization of the event. Indeed, but this was what I was trained to do. This, and pliés."
-Barbara Browning, I’m Trying To Reach You
She wore red high heels and tight jeans and backcombed her hair. She scared them all. She chewed gum loudly in class, she got great grades and she knew she could fuck whoever she wanted and knew she’d fuck them better than they’d ever been fucked before. So she fucked the ones she chose to fuck. She fucked the ones who deserved her shit. And then she fucked Mark.
—Paula Bomer, Inside Madeleine
The liberating thing about publishing an essay collection before you are a fully formed person is that there is nothing to fear. You have no readers. No experience. No memories of doing it before. No wounds. The bad thing about publishing an essay collection at twenty-five, when the frontal lobe has barely finished developing, is there is nothing to fear. No readers. No experience. No memories of doing it before. No wounds.
Chloe Caldwell, I’ll Tell You In Person
Sitting in Taco Bell, I thought about how in my head, at the park, while glancing up at the clouds puffing innocent shapes in the sky, I had addressed her. I had addressed the ghost who’d haunted me for more than a decade. “I’m not glad you’re dead, but I’m glad I’m alive,” I’d told her. “I’m glad I can keep feeling sunlight fade my tattoos. I’m glad I can keep inhaling the corticosteroid nasal spray that relieves my allergy symptoms. I’m glad I can keep on listening to right-wing talk radio for fun.”
I bowed my head at the chalupa on the tray before me. In the context of our morning pilgrimage, it assumed the status of holy object. Relic. I peeled off its paper wrapper.
My fingers parted its doughy lips. Sealed by sour cream, they made that noise some girls make when you open them.
A woman was sacrificed so that I might sit here, autopsying my chalupa.
I noticed body parts floating inside the gooey rice: two coarse strands of hair.
I was alive and she was dead, so I ate. I ate my lunch, hair and all. We are all cannibals.
Myriam Gurba, Mean