Annette Hester

“For this scribe has read a great many of these accounts and taken away another lesson: that to be a woman is to have your story misremembered. Discarded. Twisted.”
― Shannon Chakraborty, The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi

“Traders along our fair shores warn against speaking her name as though she is a djinn that might be summoned as such-- though, strangely, they have little compunction when it comes to spreading vicious rumors about her body and her sexuality: these things that men obsess over when they hate what they desire and desire what they cannot possess”
― Shannon Chakraborty, The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi

“Biographers polish away the jagged edges of capable, ruthless queens so they may be remembered as saints, and geographers warn believing men away from such and such a place with scandalous tales of lewd local females who cavort in the sea and ravish foreign interlopers. Women are the forgotten spouses and unnamed daughters. Wet nurses and handmaidens; thieves and harlots. Witches. A titillating anecdote to tell your friends back home or a warning.”
― Shannon Chakraborty, The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi

“(...)though, strangely, they have little compunction when it comes to spreading vicious rumors about her body and her sexuality: theses things that men obsess over when they hate what they desire and desire what they cannot possess.”
― Shannon Chakraborty, The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi