Alicia Tapia

“I saw the surface of her, merely the outer shell, and realized that she was mere surface all the way to her core.”
― Percival Everett, James

“I feel a thick cord. It connects my spirits to a memory that I have tried to forget. I have pretended it wasn't there, and I drank or even smoked my way around it when I was younger. Then I buried the memory under accomplishment. My story is stalled here, as if the cord has choked off the rest of the story and I cannot move forward. As the story maker, I have to find a way. First, I need to speak and remember what I do not want to remember. Even now, years later, when my mother is gone, even the monster is gone, I have come to understand they do not want the haunting either. They want to move on.”
― Joy Harjo, Poet Warrior

“I think about how Nāwahī, the editor of Ke Aloha Aina, defined aloha 'āina as a constant magnetic pull toward's one place that cannot be weakened or dettered. I think about Puna, being pulled, pulled, pulled home, always and every day.”
― Jamaica Osorio

“Our new teachers do not offer the young a ready-made philosophy, but rather the opportunity and means to create one. This, of course, is a teacher's true mission.”
― Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude and Other Writings