Bella

“In Vietnamese, the word for missing someone and remembering them is the same: nhớ. Sometimes, when you ask me over the phone, Có nhớ mẹ không? I flinch, thinking you meant, Do you remember me?

I miss you more than I remember you.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“Nearly every guy I've dated believed they should already be famous, believed that greatness was their destiny and they were already behind schedule. An early moment of intimacy often involved a confession of this sort: a childhood vision, teacher's prophecy, a genius IQ. At first, with my boyfriend in college, I believed it, too. Later, I thought I was just choosing delusional men. Now I understand it's how boys are raised to think, how they are lured into adulthood. I've met ambitious women, driven women, but no woman has ever told me that greatness was her destiny.”
― Lily King, Writers & Lovers

“For centuries, the West has regurgitated representations of colonized women that came to be accepted as more real than the real. Jezebels. Black velvet. Harem girls. China Dolls. Princess Pocahontas. All of these reduced complex human beings to cardboard cutout sexual objects without agency and whose surrendered sexuality was de facto justification for white supremacy.”
― Ruby Hamad, White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color

“Arab women came to be seen as they are largely seen today: sexually repressed, frigid, virginal, burdened by virtue, shame, and family honor, and more or less silenced—ironically, pretty much the things that supposedly made white women so special for so long.”
― Ruby Hamad, White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color