Niswat

“That what my students do need—an obliteration of the same systems I grew up in, a burning down and re-creation of the spaces that I relied on all these years to keep me safe—I can’t do and don’t know how to.”
― Lynn Steger Strong, Want

“This woman sighs this big, long sigh that I think is supposed to be a sort of compliment-slash-show-of-solidarity between us. I know that if I were to sit with her by ourselves and talk a long time I’d probably like her. My quadrilingual friend is kind and brilliant and exacting and I trust she likes this woman because she is too. But I don’t have the space to sit and talk with her, to listen to and try to like her, so I sit and I allow myself to hate her, because I’m tired and it’s easy.”
― Lynn Steger Strong, Want

“I think now that if I met them on the street I would find them completely fine and bland, just people. I would find them stunted and a little sad. They wouldn’t make me angry. It’s only because they are the place where the word “love” was built for me that I feel such fury toward them, that each time I get too close, I get so mad.”
― Lynn Steger Strong, Want

“sometimes violences are small and subtle, but that only makes them harder to make sense of, to figure out how they might be forgiven, how one might make amends for them later on.”
― Lynn Steger Strong, Want