Maya > Recent Status Updates

"Now what?" I wailed. "I've lost five years of my life! It's too late to switch to a degree in fine arts." At twenty-three, it's too late for everything. Not until our forties do we realize there's still time. Maybe not for everything, but at least for everything that matters.

Still, I couldn't seem to fall in love. I basically made friends, most of whom ended up as my lovers. Now and then, a lover would fall in love with me and I'd have the impression that life was staring me dead in the eye in its most unflattering wig.

ok finally reading the actual one
first page made me nervy bc it was like poetry and incomprehensible but the whole thing is just weird & suicidal so getting used to it

The setting sun shone in the green water of the Jhelum; its last rays reddened the horizon. I thought of my grandmother telling me as a child, "When an innocent man is killed, the sky turns red." An innocent man had died in Kashmir almost every day after the winter of 1990.

Jammu, a small city with brutal summers, had become the refuge for most Kashmiri Pandits. I was nervous at the prospect of seeing my teacher and my childhood friend as refugees.

i appreciate how honest he is about the difficulty of documenting these tragedies and horrors

When I came across an old copy of George Orwell's Homage to Cata-lonia, 1 developed an obsession with his merging of the personal and the political, the small details and the big ideas, his sparse, powerful prose. Homage to Catalonia brought back many memories of Kashmir and made me believe that writing similarly about my own war might be possible someday.

sorry ts is no homage to cataluña

"Nehru and Gandhi studied law in England and were both very good writers. You have seen their books in our library. Václav Havel is a very big writer. The Dalai Lama has read a lot and can teach people many things. None of them used guns but they changed history. If you want to do something for Kashmir, I would say you should read."

The best story was about the magical Kalashnikov. Made in Russia, a gift from Pakistan, it was known to have powers greater than Aladdin's lamp.

When the guests have gone, it's just Dad and me. His eyes are blood-shot, and it does something to a girl—even a grown girl with an awful father—to see her father hurt. Maybe that's why I've looked away.

Dad stuffs his hands into his suit pockets. "There's a Braum's across the street."
I frown. "Okay?"
"Want to go?"

WHAT

Brushing a few crumbs off my lap, I announce that we should go. Jet still has science homework, and Seth will need to go out.
Ryan clicks his tongue. "Yikes, science. Can't help you there" Like he has ever helped with her homework. How can he say and do such normal things when he's said and done such awful ones? To be fair, how can he say and do such awful things when he's said and done such normal ones?

According to a National Fertility Study conducted in 1970 by Princeton University's Office of Population Control, 20 percent of all married Black women have been permanently sterilized. Approximately the same percentage of Chicana women had been rendered surgically infertile. Moreover, 43 percent of the women sterilized through federally subsidized programs were Black.

…estimated that between 100,000 and 200,000 sterilizations had been funded that year by the federal government. During Hitler's Germany, incidentally, 250,000 sterilizations were carried out under the Nazis' Hereditary Health Law. Is it possible that the record of the Nazis, throughout the years of their reign, may have been almost equaled by U.S. government-funded sterilizations in the space of a single year?

Calling for the recruitment of Black ministers to lead local birth control committees.. "We do not want word to get out," wrote Margaret Sanger in a letter to a colleague,
..that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.

The struggle against racism must be an ongoing theme of the anti-rape movement, which must not only defend women of color, but the many victims of the racist manipulation of the rape charge as well…sexual violence constitutes one of the facets of a deep and ongoing crisis of capitalism… the threat of rape will continue to exist as long as the overall oppression of women remains an essential crutch for capitalism.

The myth of the black rapist of white women is the twin of the myth of the bad black woman—both designed to apologize for and facilitate the continued exploitation of black men and women.
Black women perceived this connection very clearly and were early in the forefront of the fight against lynching.

We made candles of tissue paper for the cake, covered the table as nicely as possible with paper napkins, and sang "Happy Birthday." We made speeches to her and she cried with surprise and happiness. The next day we received a note from her:

Dear Claudia, Betty and Elizabeth. I am very glad for what you did for me for my birthday. I really don't know how to thank you. Yesterday was one of the best years of my life.

She went on to pose a question to the audience of white club-women: Did they know that "a colored man once said that if he owned Hell and Texas, he would prefer to rent out Texas and live in Hell..."?

Then the girl said, "It is all right for you, Miss Anthony, to treat Negroes as equals, but I refuse to take dictation from a colored woman." "Indeed!" said Miss Anthony.
“Then," she said, "you needn't take any more dictation from me.”
so much sass

“…Look at King Alfred and see what a great man he was. He at one time did not know his a,b,c, but before his death he commanded armies and nations… he always looked forward and studied the harder. I think if the colored people study like King Alfred they will soon do away the evil of slavery. I can't see how the Americans can call this a land of freedom where so much slavery is.” – 16-year-old girl

this is a really crazy look into slavery since we didn’t really learn any of the horrifying details in school

it’s astounding to see the blatant precedents that were set that still hold today whether in prisons or domestic work etc