Everybody should read fiction… I don’t think serious fiction is written for a few people. I think we live in a stupid culture that won’t educate its … - Percival Everett

I considered the northern white stance against slavery. How much of the desire to end the institution was fueled by a need to quell and subdue white guilt and pain? Was it just too much to watch? Did it offend Christian sensibilities to live in a society that allowed that practice? I knew that whatever the cause of their war, freeing slaves was an incidental premise and would be an incidental result.

Linda Mallory was the postmodern fuck. She was self conscious to the point of distraction, counted her orgasms and felt none of them. She worried about how she looked while making love, about how her expression changed when she started to come, whether she was too tight, too loose, too dry, too wet, too loud, to quiet and she found need to express these concerns during the course of the event.

Because we must let the whites be the ones who name the trouble.” “And why is that?” I asked. February said, “Because they need to know everything before us. Because they need to name everything.