River Woman, River Demon Quotes

“Santa Muerte, the bitchest boss of them all—keeper of death, prostitutes, drug addicts, the disenfranchised.”
― Jennifer Givhan, River Woman, River Demon

“You were screaming that you’d caught them. That she was a whore. I believe your exact words were a husband-thieving whore.” He shakes his head like he’s ashamed to even utter such despicable words in polite society. “And that if she didn’t stay the fuck away from Jericho, you’d fucking murder her.”
― Jennifer Givhan, River Woman, River Demon

“Our Magick is about asserting our internal spiritual power that rises above structures and racism, fear, shame, and abandonment. Woman, you are the Magick.”
― Jennifer Givhan, River Woman, River Demon

“Never trust anyone who can sit in front of a full basket of freshly fried tortilla chips and a cilantro-garnished dish of salsa without sneaking a few bites.”
― Jennifer Givhan, River Woman, River Demon

“First, you have to mother yourself, and that means forgiving yourself, along with the mother who couldn’t raise you and then the woman who did.”
― Jennifer Givhan, River Woman, River Demon

“The sex isn’t great. The buildup was certainly more intense. The actual show only lasted a minute at best. But considering the last times with Sammy we were living off ramen in a hole in the wall with no hot water and having sex on a mattress on the floor, this isn’t the worst”
― Jennifer Givhan, River Woman, River Demon

“All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.”
― Jennifer Givhan, River Woman, River Demon

“Now that my ladder’s gone, I must lie down where all the ladders start, in the foul rag and bone shop of the heart,” I recite from Yeats’s The Circus Animals’ Desertion.”
― Jennifer Givhan, River Woman, River Demon

“For us folks of color, conjuring isn’t entertainment; it’s the brass key pointing us to freedom. Jericho taught me that. How Magick can be, beyond the layers of doubt and shame and skepticism where the white world has conditioned us. When we come back to ourselves, the power and strength are ours. Still, it’s Magick, not fairytale. It’s survival. And even Magick with the best intentions has a way of turning dark sometimes, turning ugly.”
― Jennifer Givhan, River Woman, River Demon

“It’s like soaking bones clean in a pot of vinegar until they whiten. Only I’m the muddy pot, not the scoured bones for divining. I’m the leftover water, boiling nothing but muck.”
― Jennifer Givhan, River Woman, River Demon

“Shadow can protect us. Darkness, too, has its blessings.
Brujas know this. Mama knew this.
Energy is energy. And brujas also know not to stay in one without the other for too long. Balance. An ouroboros choking on its own goddamn tail gets you right back to where you started. A never-ending circle. Maybe I haven’t honored the cycle of light and dark, a visitor in the shadows, overstaying my welcome.”
― Jennifer Givhan, River Woman, River Demon

“As we wind through the graves, I’m reminded of growing up down the road from the town dump to the north and the cemetery to the south, my own house haunting the center, equal radius to either destination: dumping ground or burial. Mama’s ghost skirted the edges; I could feel her presence, but not nearly enough. Girlhood nights I used to sleepwalk, and Alba would find me, wriggling through the slats in the fence, kneeling at the makeshift altar I’d made of debris, all that wreckage, a shrine for the mama I never knew, and my staunch and sturdy saint of a sister would walk me home where I’d claim no memory in the morning. Dreamworld would merge with waking, and I felt it—embryonic, swelling, lucent, what would sprout inside me as I grew older, rasher—the city of the Dead. Where I accidentally sent Karma a few short years later. Where—I can’t shake the clawing feeling now—I’ve sent Cecilia as well, with my vitriol, with my jealousy.”
― Jennifer Givhan, River Woman, River Demon