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Not until I acquired a new language could I make sense of my own thoughts. That’s why, though I came here when five, I don’t remember much.
He didn’t want to climb anyone else’s social ladder, not when he’d already built himself a citadel.
For so long, I’d played along with her lie of a happy narrative for her sake. Even as a child, I felt her happiness was more important. I had painful notions of powerlessness and worthiness, earning my keep and their love and my right to stay.
Most Swedes don’t like to discuss racism at all, believing it unnecessary since they are not racist, of course.
But why should we venerate the myths and legends of only a few cultures, recognizing how they are foundational to classical literature, whereas those little stories from other cultures are considered—lesser, quaint, and colorful?
Like me—the mudang, most of them women, are also considered of lesser value. They rank among the whores, butchers, performers, and sorcerers—a notch above the slaves and untouchables. However, although the mudang are shunned in polite society, the desperate pay for their services—their abilities to summon deities, to speak for the dead. The mudang wear the clothes of both male and female, inviting possession by gods and goddesses. They are liminal, they are both, they are all-encompassing and beyond.
