Palm Latitudes Quotes

“Women have waited millions of years, growing separate as another species, with visions and priorities no man-words, no man-measurements can comprehend.”
― Kate Braverman, Palm Latitudes

“It was winter, winds were stirring. The Santa Anas which come from the desert beyond the city. . . . I understood exactly what God was saying. . . . Behold, you are insignificant and flawed.”
― Kate Braverman, Palm Latitudes

“The world had fallen apart. It had collapsed. And it was lying flat and one-dimensional, utterly broken, beneath a hot and abominable sun.
'Las latitudes de las palmas,' she says.
Yes, of course, she realizes, it stretches from Mexico City and El Salvador, through Havana and Miami, across the islands of the Caribbean, from Caracas to Los Angeles. It is that particular air of slow rotting, that special scented steaming poison masquerading as emeralds, spice, clouds. This is illusion, a subterfuge of the elements.”
― Kate Braverman, Palm Latitudes

“Now the wind begins to stir. They call this a Santa Ana, this wind which comes from the desert beyond the city, unpredictable and fierce, scenting the irradiated night with sagebrush and sand. She takes pleasure in the way it howls through its broken Spanish mouth, shattering leaves, breaking the branches of trees, etching its insistent southern story in a braille of twisted fronds. She enjoys the stillness in the mornings after the winds have passed, after the winds have ripped the palms, made confetti of the pale listless fronds, dragged their anemic sun-drained fronds to the ground. Then the city has been purified. A sense of salt lingers. The calligraphy is obvious. At such moments she understands exactly what God is saying. His voice rises with the clarity of church bells above the debris. And God is saying the party is over.”
― Kate Braverman, Palm Latitudes

“Women turn on a lunar cycle. It is not mathematics or equations but the pull of the moon which makes them bleed. It is men who seek to chart space. Women already know that space is inhabited. Each month, women feel eggs and stars and infant unborn moons die and squeeze through their wounded wombs.”
― Kate Braverman, Palm Latitudes

“Women have waited millions of years growing separate as another species, with visions and priorities no man-words, no man-measurements can comprehend.”
― Kate Braverman, Palm Latitudes

“This southern city which seems only peripherally and accidentally America. This city which was once an outpost of Spain and once a region of Mexico. This city webbed with boulevards bearing the names of Spanish psychotics and saints. This incomplete city which seems to have no recognizable past, no ground that could be called unassailably sacred. This incomplete city that speaks of an impending terror.”
― Kate Braverman, Palm Latitudes