Bilqees (thebellekeys)

“Nobody needed to get all that educated for being a miner, so they let the schools go to rot. And they made sure no mills or factories got in the door. Coal only. To this day, you have to cross a lot of ground to find other work. Not an accident, Mr. Armstrong said, and for once we believed him, because down in the dark mess of our little skull closets some puzzle pieces were clicking together and our world made some terrible kind of sense. The dads at home drinking beer in their underwear, the moms at the grocery with their SNAP coupons. The army recruiters in shiny gold buttons come to harvest their jackpot of hopeless futures. Goddamn. The trouble with learning the backgrounds is that you end up wanting to deck somebody, possibly Bettina Cook and the horse she rode in on. (Not happening. Her dad being head of the football boosters and major donor.) Once upon a time we had our honest living that was God and country. Then the world turns and there’s no God anymore, no country, but it’s still in your blood that coal is God’s gift and you want to believe. Because otherwise it was one more scam in the fuck-train that’s railroaded over these mountains since George Washington rode in and set his crew to cutting down our trees. Everything that could be taken is gone. Mountains left with their heads blown off, rivers running black. My people are dead of trying, or headed that way, addicted as we are to keeping ourselves alive. There’s no more blood here to give, just war wounds. Madness. A world of pain, looking to be killed.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead

“It hit me pretty hard, how there’s no kind of sad in this world that will stop it turning. People will keep on wanting what they want, and you’re on your own.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead

“Chantelle has three older brothers. Their parents are divorced, so they spend the weekdays at their mother and stepfather’s house, and the weekends at their father’s house. She says that it’s fun to belong to two places. I know what she means.”
― Bilqees Mohammed, Juanita : A bilingual children's book set in Trinidad and Tobago

“I wanted to go home. Which was nowhere, but it's a feeling you keep having, even after that's no longer a place anymore. Probably if they dropped a bomb and there wasn't any food left on the planet, you'd still keep feeling hungry too.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead