Alex Peek

“With money I earned by myself, I gave my daughter a room just so she can read in peace for a day. And I sat there and watched her read, sipping a scotch from the bar. And I cried like a baby. And Lina, my little Lina, she said, 'Mama, why are you crying?' And I said, ' I know how God feels now.”
― Ocean Vuong, The Emperor of Gladness

“THE ROSES

One day in summer
when everything
has already been more than enough
the wild beds start
exploding open along the berm
of the sea; day after day
you sit near them; day after day,
the honey keeps on coming
in the red cups and the bees
like amber drops roll
in the petals: there is no end,
believe me! to the inventions of summer,
to the happiness your body
is willing to bear.”
― Mary Oliver, Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver

“Tomorrow the One Who Has No Name, he mused, might become He Who Has No Identity, and then He Who Has No Body, and then He Who Can't Be Caught and Thrown in Jail.”
― Ahmed Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad

“...true decolonization was not just a political project, but also one rooted in self-actualization through self-expression.”
― Amy Sall, The African Gaze: Photography, Cinema and Power