I have built over time a deep kinship with species that have been maligned by other humans—venomous snakes, fungal parasites, soil-dwelling insects, slippery spineless beings—and the “undesirable” habitats they call home. Of these, snakes were my first love. Their habitats were also my refuge; their complication of category—somewhere between earthly and demonic—needed no explanation to me, a child who found herself within the dysphoric double consciousness of an amphibious personhood. Together we could slither between the rocky contours of the world, both natural and imposed, and rest in the
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