Margo's Got Money Problems by Rufi Thorpe
And we shook on it there under the glowing red hat of the Arby's, with Ric Flair and the Virgin Mary smiling down on us, willing the story to go on, to never end, to start over again, one adventure leading to the next, and we would never die, and we'd be young forever, and we would scream to the crowd, 'Look at me! Look at the beautiful, insane things I can do with my body! Look at me! Love me!' Because that's all art is, in the end.
Rebel Girl by Kathleen Hanna
Maybe the struggle for language was the moment we were trapped in. Why were we always supposed to answer ignorant questions with thoughtful, articulate answers? Why were we always explaining ourselves? Maybe that was what third-wave girls were about: speaking back to power with sounds that didn't always make sense.
Martyr!
It feels so American to discount dreams because they're not built of objects, of things you can hold and catalogue and then put in a safe. Dreams give us voices, visions, ideas, mortal terrors, and departed beloveds. Nothing counts more to an individual, or less to an empire...'Paradise is mine today, as cash in hand,' Hafez had written. 'Why should I count upon the puritan's pledge of tomorrow?'
Anita de Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez
Human will is a particularly powerful magic. Alchemy happens when a person truly decides something; when a mind is changed. We'd shared exchanges like this hundreds of times before, my husband and I. Tiny acts of violence enacted with words. Exchanges that had cut and left me bleeding, with my best stuff—confidence, clarity—pooling down, away from me, onto the floor. But not that night. No. Because that day I had decided to reclaim my might; to cease to be shrunk. And in my decision, I'd grown a new version of myself.
Berlin by Bea Setton
But souls are not recast with a change of decor. Of course I'd always known this, everyone does, but to live it again and again in each new city and flat, to perform varieties of the same exhausting choreography only to find myself in the same spot, hating myself in the mirror, was draining me of the last reserves of self-respect I had left.
The Man Who Could Move Clouds by Ingrid Rojas Contreras
Mami says she lost the gift of seeing ghosts when my sister was born, and the gift of hearing voices when I was born, but in the wake of her decreased power, she retained the ability to foretell the future, as well as the eerie yet modest talent of appearing in two places at once.