“White folks did what they wanted to do. It may be hard to understand if you never lived in that world. People looked at you as nothing. They think they can do anything to you and it’s alright…Parents tried to keep their kids close to home so they wouldn’t get in trouble with white people and wind up in jail, or missing, or dead.”
“Bay Area Weekly just named me Silicon Valley’s Number One Spoiled Brat. Remember, we’re talking about California. Think of all the other spoiled brats I had to beat out for that title.”
“Or that when white people compliment her (“She’s so professional. She’s always on time”), it doesn’t always feel good, because sometimes people are gonna be surprised by the fact that she showed up, rather than the fact that she had something to say when she did.”
“If you elect me to congress, I will pass legislation allowing you to deduct Girl Scout cookies as charitable donations. This is my only platform.”
“It started with the layoffs, and then it just kept getting worse. I thought I’d get out, and I haven’t been able to, and it’s just a lot. I’m fine. It’s just exhausting to be around people sometimes.”
Hortensia James and Marion Agostino are neighbors in Katterjin, an exclusive, wealthy subdivision in post-Apartheid South Africa. Katterjin's predominantly white status quo is broken when Hortensia, a hugely successful, black designer, purchases the first house that Marion, an equally successful, white architect, ever designed.
The Scooby Gang taught Saturday-morning-cartoon-obsessed-kids that there's a rational explanation for everything and reason triumphs over superstition. Monsters are not real. But what if they were?
“There is no way to get around the fact that, whatever legitimate federalism-based issues were at play, slavery was a central reason Anglo-Texans wanted out of Mexico. Using unpaid labor to clear forests, plant crops, harvest them, and move them to market was the basis of their lives and wealth.”
“I don’t know who’s right, who’s wrong, or what the necklace does, but I do know my surrogate Bubble-mother squeezing my actual bio-dad to death over some bull$#%@t jewelry is therapy bait I can’t afford.”
When Candace Sinclair was fifteen, something terrible happened, giving her a head injury that causes excruciating headaches. But Candace doesn’t remember what that thing was.
Violinist Anna Sun is staggering under her cascading problems. She’s blocked musically and can’t perform in public, let alone in the recording studio. Her therapist is calling out her tricks for masking and pushing Anna to create boundaries with her parents and sister.
About 15 years ago, Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg published The Plain Janes and its sequel, Janes in Love, through Minx, a young adult imprint of DC Comics. They were a bit ahead of their time. The graphic novels were critical darlings but sales were slow.
“Some of my closest friends have/ chosen to go to weddings/ instead of hanging around the city/ listening to me complain about someone I kissed in 2012/ when someone is married I do take that personally”
The Grace Year, by Kim Liggett is an eerie look into a fictional cult-like society where young women are thought to gain a wicked magic when they reach womanhood.
It’s 1989, and the Lady Falcons of Danvers, Massachusetts are staring down another losing season of field hockey. Instead of going full Bad News Bears, the goalie decides to try something new and pledge her soul to the devil in exchange for victory at the state finals.
A little girl with maimed legs, her forgetful father, and their talking cat live in a house that just has to be haunted.
“Occasionally Sweety did things that others had a hard time comprehending. Like the day she gave her book report through interpretive dance.”
So many post-apocalyptic stories are dismal and cynical, focusing on evil people capitalizing on a new chaotic paradigm to do terrible things to other people. Whenever I've read books like Cormac McCarthy's The Road, Steven King's The Stand, or even when watching The Walking Dead, I've often thought that, in a real post-apocalyptic scenario, people would probably work together to rebuild society, rather than tear each other down.
