Diaa Sersawi

“كيف أسمح لنفسي
أن أكون وحيدة قبل الثلاثين ؟”
― إيمان مرسال, ممر معتم يصلح لتعلم الرقص

“Women have been driven mad, "gaslighted," for centuries by the refutation of our experience and our instincts in a culture which validates only male experience. The truth of our bodies and our minds has been mystified to us. We therefore have a primary obligation to each other: not to undermine each others' sense of reality for the sake of expediency; not to gaslight each other.

Women have often felt insane when cleaving to the truth of our experience. Our future depends on the sanity of each of us, and we have a profound stake, beyond the personal, in the project of describing our reality as candidly and fully as we can to each other.”
― Adrienne Rich, On Lies, Secrets, and Silence. Selected Prose 1966-1978

“Silence can be a plan
rigorously executed

the blueprint to a life

It is a presence
it has a history a form

Do not confuse it
with any kind of absence”
― Adrienne Rich, The Dream of a Common Language

“While I am sympathetic to the political project of an all-encompassing utopian inclusivity, I am less sanguine about its feasibility and more worried about
its cruelty.”
― Joseph Massad