"In his mind, he had names for the schoolchildren, the ones who caught his eye."
"There were other girls; Laura, Michelle, and Deb, or so he imagined their names to be." (37)
The way he is making up identities for these children that fit a narrative that he wants... nasty. #BSUENG490

"There are different kinds of humans," I said.
......
It said. "You are probably the most evil of your people." (54)
If people don't understand someone else's culture or being, then they assume it is evil or made to be against them. #BSUENG490

#BSUENG490 "A tool of social control, women have been encouraged to recognize only one area of human differences as legitimate, those differences which exist between women and men." (293)

I think it's crazy how, after all of this, Sam still proposes to Cassie, but it surprised me even more when she said yes. Cassie also undergoes all this transformation to return to the life she had wanted to escape. #BSUENG490

#BSUENG490 "The light through the curtains glistened blue on his glasses as he turned his head to me. "Who are you?" he asked." (329)
Me:

I think the onions really put into perspective for Cassie how easy she can mess up. She has this slip-up where she is mixing her and Lexie up and trying to mold them together, but she needs to lock in and remember that she isn't Lexie and doesn't know everything about Lexie. #BSUENG490

Cassie is definitely enjoying being Lexie way too much. She is no longer her detective self and is instead transforming more and more into Lexie. This is 100% going to screw her over. #BSUENG490

"For the first time ever, the sight of her felt good: that handcuff bite on my wrist jerking me down to earth, that cold-water slap in the face claiming everything else out of my mind. I almost reached out and pressed my hand onto the picture." (86)
#BSUENG490

"Without a strong and vocal women's movement - with all the factions and internal disputes characteristic of a popular movement - the clock indeed turns backward." (626) If the movements don't persist, the ideals of the movement will only move backwards. #BSUENG490

#BSUENG490 I am so excited to continue reading this book. I love the idea of a body double. I also am so excited to see what happens when Carrie starts to turn into "Lexie".

I 100% agree! I don't think we got enough of Ada, but at the same time, I believe that is significant because she wasn't the one with them a lot of the time. It was Asughara who was with them. #BSUENG490

"Consider her burned open. It was an unusual incarnation to be a child of Ala as well as an ogbanje, to be mothered by the god who owns life yet pulled toward death. We did the best we could." (207) Did they? Did they do their best to spare or protect Ada? #BSUENG490

“The machine is us, our processes, an aspect of our embodiment. We can be responsible for machines; they do not dominate or threaten us.” (353)
But don’t they dominate us and our lives? Just as gender dominates and threatens our personal identity. #BSUENG490

I honestly expected Ashughara to want Ada dead. She is selfish and wants to go home. She twists her words around to make it seem like it will keep Ada safe when in reality it will kill her all for not. #BSUENG490

"I was a child of trauma; my birth was on top of a scream and I was baptised in blood. By the time Ada brought me to Georgia, I was ready to consume everything I touched." (73)
#BSUENG490

”When Beauvoir claims that woman is a ’historical situation,’ she emphasizes that the body suffers a certain cultural construction, not only through conventions that sanction and proscribe how one acts one’s body, the “act” or performance that one’s body is…” (485) #BSUENG490

We think about this because there has to be a point, a purpose to this, a reason for why we were thrust across the river, screeching and fighting.” (35)
The first person plural is interesting to me and how they describe their birth to be something they remember as torment.
#BSUENG490

“So the real issue was that there was no little girl they could cut up to satisfy the general curiosity.” (285)
This hurt but it’s true, they wanted to take her apart to continue to profit off of her even after death. But thankfully Lib saved her 🙏 #BSUENG490

”A believer’s prayer or a historian’s sense of casual narrative or a scientist’s clear-eyed scrutiny may enliven maternal attentiveness, which in its turn may prepare a mother for prayer, historical insight, or experiment.” (36) #BSUENG490

I know Rosaleen O'Donnell wants to do well by Anna, but the manipulation of her own daughter and using her religious faith against her was crazy. Lib truly wants the best for Anna, even if it isn't what Anna wants.
#BSUENG490

“Was that why the woman made an uncanny cult of Anna now, apparently preferring her daughter to be more saint than human?” (162)
#BSUENG490

“What did they think they were doing, setting a little girl up for a saint because they imagined her to have risen above ordinary human needs?” (31) #BSUENG490

“Women themselves have often, of course, been described or imagined at houses. ….controversial theory of female “inner space” in an effort to account for little girls’ interest in domestic enclosures.”
I think the term “enclosure” is used intentionally to dehumanize women in literature.
#BSUENG490

“This story is still being told, to this very day, to scare the living daylights out of the young females of the species.” -The Merfolk and Washing Hair
This line reminds me of how the stories of motherhood frighten young women. #BSUENG490

The Courtship of Mr.Lyon and The Tigers Bride when it comes to having parallels with Beauty and the Beast. #BSUENG490

“Even if we should remove every legal and political discrimination against women; even if we should accept their three dignity and power as a sex; …and economically a non-productive, dependent class-servants of the other sex.”
—Perkins Gilman on Nervous Breakdowns
#BSUENG490

The husband in ”The Yellow Wallpaper” starts out enabling the narrator and dismissing her feelings. But then he starts to realize in doing so he has pushed her into madness. Leaving her to deal with her mental health and postpartum depression alone, rude. #BSUENG490