The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna

by Juliet Grames

“Some parts of the story, they no nice,” she warned me, in all fairness. But who ever understands or believes a warning like that?

They were, as mentioned, women of total faith who trusted wholly in the saving grace of Jesus, but from a practical standpoint it never hurt to back up His good efforts with a little mountain witchcraft.

It is easier to remember the first Stella as the perfect little girl she was than to imagine the real person she never had a chance to be,

This was the trouble with emigration—it dismantled the patriarchy. Because really, what did Assunta, or any woman, need a husband for, when she did every goddamn thing herself?

it is the moral responsibility of the incompetent to identify their own weaknesses and not accept positions of power.

History marches on, and names and destinations change, but not the injustices we let one another suffer.

But what if we said that the power of human faith is in making things real even when they are not—that by giving imaginary entities our credence we allow them to assume power over us—to step into being? Because what is faith but a willingness to believe?