“A person should stand up straight, not crooked,” my mother would whisper, referring to both the calligrapher and her creation.
I felt like I had entered a thick and strange haze. Daily showers made me feel unnaturally clean, and I missed the smooth arc of the sun across the sky. I felt like a space alien walking down a crowded street and making small talk after class.
To me, Sethe was the literary embodiment of womanhood — the queenly woman with blood on her hands and a tree scarred into her back. She was the personification of repression and “rememory,” the manifestation of a traumatic past into the present.
“The Little Prince” makes me homesick for all the places I’ve been and all the places I have yet to see.