It'd been Lucy who ran tattling to Miss Mary about my lettering under the tree, and Miss Mary had run tattling to missus. I'd judged Lucy to be stupid, but she was only weak-willed and wanting to get...

Mr. Vesey, though, he didn't like any kind of talk about heaven. He said that was the coward's way, pining for life in the hereafter, acting like this one didn't mean a thing. I had to side with him...

Some things were not possible in this world. Children did not have two parents who refused to love them. One, maybe, but for pity's sake, not two.

This is a hard question. But as women we have a right to ask the hard questions. The only way I have ever understood, broken free, emerged, healed, forgiven, flourished, and grown powerful is by...

. . . women internalize the feminine wound or feminine inferiority so deeply, there's little or no female authority and esteem to fall back on. So they seek it by adopting and pleasing patriarchal...

Lily Owens: If your favorite color is blue, why did you paint the house pink? August Boatwright: {chuckles} That was May's doing. When we went to the paint shop, she latched on to a color called,...

Water beaded across her shoulders, shining like drops of milk, and her breasts swayed in the currents. It was the kind of vision you never really get over. I couldn't help it, I wanted to go and lick...

I want to tell you I'm strong and resolute, but in truth, I feel afraid and alone and uncertain. I feel as if he has died, and I suppose in some way it's true. I'm left with nothing but this strange...

I heard mauma say, I don't spec to get free. The only way I'm getting free is for you to get free.

It never occurred to her their gaiety wasn't contentment, but survival.

She say Fon people keep a spirit tree and it always be a Baybob. Your granny-mauma wrapped the trunk with thread she begged and stole. She took me out there and say, 'We gon put our spirits in the...

...there is a seed of light inside of us, a mysterious Inner Voice.

As writer Isak Dinesen put it, All sorrows can be borne if we put them in a story or tell a story about them.

Squeezing it in my palm, I prayed, Please, God, let this seed you planted in me bear fruit.

Her name was Mary, and there ends any resemblance to the mother of our Lord.

Drawing a breath, I flung myself across the door sill. That was the artless way I navigated the hurdles of girlhood. Everyone thought I was a plucky girl, but in truth, I wasn't as fearless as...

The sorry truth is you can walk your feet to blisters, walk till kingdom-come, and you never will outpace your grief.

We walked to the woods beside the pink house with her stories still pulled soft around our shoulders. I could feel them touching me in places, like an actual shawl.