Samantha

“if people cannot be flawed in fiction there’s no place left for us to be human.”
― Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist: Essays

“Why do you try to injure and destroy my character rather than my opinions?”
― Kate Moore, The Woman They Could Not Silence

“An individual who drinks himself into a state of stuporous sickness runs the risk of succumbing to accidental death.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Round House

“At Sand Creek, we heard it said that they mowed us down with their howitzers. Volunteer militia under Colonel John Chivington came to kill us—we were mostly women, children, and elders. The men were away to hunt. They’d told us to fly the American flag. We flew that and a white flag too. Surrender, the white flag waved. We stood under both flags as they came at us. They did more than kill us. They tore us up. Mutilated us. Broke our fingers to take our rings, cut off our ears to take our silver, scalped us for our hair. We hid in the hollows of tree trunks, buried ourselves in sand by the riverbank. That same sand ran red with blood. They tore unborn babies out of bellies, took what we intended to be, our children before they were children, babies before they were babies, they ripped them out of our bellies. They broke soft baby heads against trees. Then they took our body parts as trophies and displayed them on a stage in downtown Denver. Colonel Chivington danced with dismembered parts of us in his hands, with women’s pubic hair, drunk, he danced, and the crowd gathered there before him was all the worse for cheering and laughing along with him. It was a celebration.”
― Tommy Orange, There There