Red🏳️‍⚧️ > Recent Status Updates

I’m only 3% of the way through this book and there are already a truly offensive number of similarities to what’s going on in the world in 2025 to what was going on in 1939. Rude 😭

KENAN: But also, for instance, in "Bloodchild." I mean, the idea that sacrifice has to be...
BUTLER: Not sacrifice. No, no...
KENAN: You wouldn't call it sacrifice? Cutting people open?
BUTLER: No, no. "Bloodchild" is very interesting in that men tend to see a horrible case of slavery, and women tend to see that, oh well, they had caesarians, big deal. [laughter]

I am on a fool’s errand, which is trying to read more interviews with her so that I can conjure the shape of more of her writing in my mind. This stage is referred to as Bargaining.

I am always tempted to say “my heroes are dead and my enemies are in power,” and while the latter is true there are still very, VERY many artists I cherish still with us.

I just miss her very much, and thus: Bargaining.

“The plague arrived like a new way of colonizing, through a virus. It turned our feathers into syringes and the sun into a frozen drop of moon through the window.”

“What is a monster but a creature of agency?”

“Beauty is meant to pleasantly put us all in our places.”

Possibly the best memoir I’ve ever read, so it’s got that going for it ;3

“I wish more people talked about the moments that lead up to a potential brawl as intimacy.”

“What I have loved and not loved about beef is that it becomes more treacherous the longer it lies dormant.”

Where has this book been all my life? OBSESSED.

“I guess it’s unfair to ask you to trust in the strength of his character when we have so much power over you.”

Aaaaaaaaaa THIS OWNS. Hopefully the ending isn’t as rushed as Ballad’s but I’m having a blast so far. Maysilee is even better than I hoped! SO. MEAN. Praise be!

“Our grief decides when it is done with us.”

“I can’t torment myself with putting my own interests first or I will lose to those who do it with ease.”

“Never appease. No one’s ever been respected for appeasing.”

As motherfucking haunted as I’d hoped it would be. Been saving this one for the right moment 😌