Haley Grubbs

“Whit found Suzanne stretched out on the chaise in their bedroom, laptop perched on her thighs. She had changed into her end-of-the-day outfit: yoga pants and one of his T-shirts, an ancient Bucknell one today. Whit, normally possessive, made an exception for her appropriation of his clothing; it was an intimacy that felt easy and right”
― Sonja Yoerg, True Places

“One strong memory I have from Diamantina is of the bus station. Every now and then, Mamãe and I spent the night there. It was around that time that I first started to understand that we were poor and what that really meant. People would look at us funny. Some spit on us as we sat there begging, and for all the world, I couldn’t understand what my mother or I had done wrong. We were nice people who hadn’t done anything to anybody. We were just trying to scrounge a little money so we wouldn’t starve to death. I didn’t really understand what money was or why it was distributed so unevenly among people. I knew we needed money to get food, but I didn’t really understand how people got money. Begging and selling flowers were clearly the worst ways to get money.”
― Christina Rickardsson, Never Stop Walking: A Memoir of Finding Home Across the World

“According to my Brazilian papers, I was born on April 30, 1983. That was also the thirty-seventh birthday of the king of Sweden, on the far side of the Atlantic from Diamantina, Brazil, where I took my first breaths. When I was little, Mamãe (the Portuguese word for mother) used to tell me that I was born in the woods, that my father was an Indian, so I was half-Indian. I don’t know whether this is true. I don’t know whether she embellished the story a bit, made it a little nicer than saying she didn’t know who my father was, or that he didn’t want anything to do with us. But I’ve always liked her version, and for many years I chose to believe it. A part of me still wants to believe it’s true. What I know and remember is that I spent my first years in the woods and caves outside of Diamantina with my mother”
― Christina Rickardsson, Never Stop Walking: A Memoir of Finding Home Across the World

“Seated cross-legged, I was leaning against the shack across from her, waiting for Camile, when a man opened the door behind the girl. He came out in just underpants and seemed drunk. He looked at the girl, grabbed her by the hair, pulled her up off the chair, and yanked her into the shack. She didn’t scream or cry. You could tell she was used to being treated that way. It was always awful to see someone in the slums who’d become a ghost, who was no longer responsive, who didn’t feel anything, who merely existed but didn’t really live”
― Christina Rickardsson, Never Stop Walking: A Memoir of Finding Home Across the World