Perhaps, then, unlikable characters, the ones who are the most human, are also the ones who are the most alive. Perhaps this intimacy makes us uncomf… - Roxane Gay

"If you're reading the find friends, you're in deep trouble. We read to find life, in all its possibilities. The relevant question isn't "Is this a potential friend for me?" but "Is this character alive?

rape was not an act between an individual and an individual, hidden in a dark room — that was what my rapist wanted me to think. Rape was and is a cultural and political act: it attempts to remove a person with agency, autonomy, and belonging from their community, to secrete them and separate them, to depoliticize their body by rendering it detachable, violable, nothing.

Nostalgia is powerful. It is natural, human, to long for the past, particularly when we can remember our histories as better than they were.