A sharp gentle work that looks rural life in the eye to create the ‘thin, delicate, layer of ice’ found in truth (279). Mice, mould and humans part of that to be feared then managed. Space itself as a form of prayer.
This chapter is part of an ongoing study of snake–human relations that is reorienting me from the harms of ophidiophobia. All through my childhood I was terrified of snakes. This culturally inherited fright led me to lead others to snake killings.
The Routledge Companion to Gender and Animals, edited by Chloe Taylor, Routledge.
Precise language speaks to the heart, a Romanian woman looks over her shoulder as the hand of conformity tightens around her neck. She chokes, ‘other people manage to clap along and make money’ her hands remain clenched in her bitter fists (69).
Sometimes just three sentences can make a story an anthem. ‘Two hundred years! It’s like thinking you own a mountain because you happen to glance at it in passing one afternoon. In a flash of blinding light the settlers are disintegrated’ (17-18).
Ghosts don’t get more convincing or scary than this twin possession. Who hasn’t seen ‘shadows dancing in a corner … as shadows tend to do’ (126)? Nothing to see, settle down neck hairs, it’s you, ‘she doesn’t have to be there’ (1,026).
How quickly a new normal can overtake the fear of losing peace. In the shadow of Gaza the rapidity with which surveillance shifts to panic, rioting, homelessness, death. All the costs of war. Clutch your pearls as you read this, white woman.
They ordered her, this stiff pink corpse
Bare as a glare and way too heavy to lift.
I would say the bath is a coffin
Enamelled sepulchre
She might leave a dint in it.
The floral sheet is loose, her flesh is …
Literary Veganism 1 March 2024
Reading this book, vital in these times, the spin of its truths. Not a book to hurry and a book to return to, over and over. All those voices. ‘You just had to be able to hear them’ (126). And then listen.
Allowances for vulnerability, age, a virus, shared animality, all tender under the skin, all drawn large in the glory of a bird caged in a cage in a cage of a drawn jungle, stealing the show where veganism is normalcy not madness.
