Pride

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 103 of 174 · 20 per page

• From The Incendiaries (2018)

  The teacher flicked my hands with a rod each time I didn’t hit the right note, but I didn’t mind. My ambition outstripped his. Let my hands swell. I could use the extra span. Bright-knuckled, I tried again. The months ticked past, then years. I kept lists of rivals; I indexed others’ exploits by age. Kiehl, at five, had given his first recital to the Danish king. Ohri, eleven, debuted at Carnegie Hall; Liu, fifteen. One night, my teacher called Libich’s Étude no. 5 the most challenging piece a soloist might attempt. It’s eluded the finest pianists, he said. I rushed to find the étude’s score. I learned it alone, in secret. I memorized Libich’s high trills. I flailed through wild ostinatos. – Once, at the table, my mother asked what I was smiling about. Haejin, she said. I blinked, Libich vibrating in my head. I, I don’t— She laughed. It’s all right, she said. I ate while she peeled a white peach. The skin dropped in a single coil. She picked it up, holding it to the light. Such a rich hue, she said. It flushed pink, backlit; I nodded, then she put it down. I could tell she wished to talk, but I was lost in trills. I pushed a last peach slice in my mouth, and I went back to the piano. – Until then, nothing I played had evoked the orphic singing I knew to be possible. It was an ideal I lacked the skill to bring to life. Each first-place prize marked a point when I’d let the music down. With Libich, I failed less. His étude asked so much of me that, at times, I’d forget I had an I. I should have learned, from this, that playing had to be birthed in a place without ego, in which I didn’t exist except as the living conduit, Libich’s medium. But then, when I showed the teacher what I could do, he was astonished. I’d achieved more than he’d hoped, he said. He switched the piece in for the next competition, a city-level open. I was driven to the recital hall. The sun fell on my hands as I practiced Libich again, fingers dancing across my legs. Spotlit, I listened to the traffic sing my name. The lax blue of L.A., heat-rippled, veiled the horizon. Like curtains, I thought, poised to rise. 5. JOHN LEAL Three months into his captivity, John Leal was shoved in the back of a truck, driven from the gulag to the frozen riverbank, and told to cross to China. He hesitated; a guard raised his gun, hit him with its butt. Bleeding from his temple, John Leal started walking. It was early March. Thin lines fissured the river’s ice. Each spring, the thawed waters were said to clog with all those shot while trying to escape, the bodies preserved, like fish, where they’d been killed. Behind him, a guard laughed.

• From The Incendiaries (2018)

  But I didn’t just wait, she said. I expected, no, I wanted to work for it. I spilled time into the piano as I’d have put cash in a bank. I saw full concert halls in the future, solo recitals. Front-page plaudits. I practiced Liszt while imagined spotlights gilded the living room. Recollection is half invention, but it feels as though I spent my entire childhood training to prove I was the significant pianist I believed I’d be. So, I piled up trophies. It wasn’t enough. The teacher flicked my hands with a rod each time I didn’t hit the right note, but I didn’t mind. My ambition outstripped his. Let my hands swell. I could use the extra span. Bright-knuckled, I tried again. The months ticked past, then years. I kept lists of rivals; I indexed others’ exploits by age. Kiehl, at five, had given his first recital to the Danish king. Ohri, eleven, debuted at Carnegie Hall; Liu, fifteen. One night, my teacher called Libich’s Étude no. 5 the most challenging piece a soloist might attempt. It’s eluded the finest pianists, he said. I rushed to find the étude’s score. I learned it alone, in secret. I memorized Libich’s high trills. I flailed through wild ostinatos. – Once, at the table, my mother asked what I was smiling about. Haejin, she said. I blinked, Libich vibrating in my head. I, I don’t— She laughed. It’s all right, she said. I ate while she peeled a white peach. The skin dropped in a single coil. She picked it up, holding it to the light. Such a rich hue, she said. It flushed pink, backlit; I nodded, then she put it down. I could tell she wished to talk, but I was lost in trills. I pushed a last peach slice in my mouth, and I went back to the piano. – Until then, nothing I played had evoked the orphic singing I knew to be possible. It was an ideal I lacked the skill to bring to life. Each first-place prize marked a point when I’d let the music down. With Libich, I failed less. His étude asked so much of me that, at times, I’d forget I had an I. I should have learned, from this, that playing had to be birthed in a place without ego, in which I didn’t exist except as the living conduit, Libich’s medium. But then, when I showed the teacher what I could do, he was astonished. I’d achieved more than he’d hoped, he said. He switched the piece in for the next competition, a city-level open. I was driven to the recital hall. The sun fell on my hands as I practiced Libich again, fingers dancing across my legs. Spotlit, I listened to the traffic sing my name. The lax blue of L.A., heat-rippled, veiled the horizon. Like curtains, I thought, poised to rise.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The humble and painful condition of the church under civil oppression made hypocrisy more rare than in times of peace, and favored the development of the heroic virtues. The Christians delighted to regard themselves as soldiers of Christ, enlisted under the victorious standard of the cross against sin, the world, and the devil. The baptismal vow was their oath of perpetual allegiance;602 the Apostles’ creed their parole;603 the sign of the cross upon the forehead, their mark of service;604 temperance, courage, and faithfulness unto death, their cardinal virtues; the blessedness of heaven, their promised reward. "No soldier," exclaims Tertullian to the Confessors, "goes with his sports or from his bed-chamber to the battle; but from the camp, where he hardens and accustoms himself to every inconvenience. Even in peace warriors learn to bear labor and fatigue, going through all military exercises, that neither soul nor body may flag .... Ye wage a good warfare, in which the living God is the judge of the combat, the Holy Spirit the leader, eternal glory the prize." To this may be added the eloquent passage of Minutius Felix605: "How fair a spectacle in the sight of God is a Christian entering the lists with affliction, and with noble firmness combating menaces and tortures, or with a disdainful smile marching to death through the clamors of the people, and the insults of the executioners; when he bravely maintains his liberty against kings and princes, and submits to God, whose servant he is; when, like a conqueror, he triumphs over the judge that condemns him. For he certainly is victorious who obtains what he fights for. He fights under the eye of God, and is crowned with length of days. You have exalted some of your stoical sufferers to the skies; such as Scaevola who, having missed his aim in an attempt to kill the king voluntarily burned the mistaking hand. Yet how many among us have suffered not only the hand, but the whole body to be consumed without a complaint, when their deliverance was in their own power! But why should I compare our elders with your Mutius, or Aquilius, or Regulus, when our very children, our sons and daughters, inspired with patience, despise your racks and wild beasts, and all other instruments of cruelty? Surely nothing but the strongest reasons could persuade people to suffer at this rate; and nothing else but Almighty power could support them under their sufferings."

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  There he sent for his friends and his wife Zeresh. 11 Then Haman recounted to them the glory of his riches, the large number of his sons, and every instance in which the king had magnified him and how he had promoted him over the officials and servants of the king. 12 Haman also said, “Even Queen Esther let no one but me come with the king to the banquet she had prepared; and tomorrow also I am invited by her [together] with the king. 13 “Yet all of this does not satisfy me as long as I see Mordecai the Jew sitting at the king’s gate.” 14 Then his wife Zeresh and all his friends said to him, “Have a gallows c fifty cubits high made, and in the morning ask the king to have Mordecai hanged on it; then go joyfully to the banquet with the king.” And the advice pleased Haman, so he had the gallows made. Esther 6 The King Plans to Honor Mordecai 1 O N THAT night a the king could not sleep; so he ordered that the book of records and memorable deeds, the chronicles, be brought, and they were read before the king. 2 It was found written there how Mordecai had reported that Bigthana and Teresh, two of the king’s eunuchs who were doorkeepers, had planned to b attack King Ahasuerus (Xerxes). 3 The king said, “What honor or distinction has been given Mordecai for this?” Then the king’s servants who attended him said, “Nothing has been done for him.” 4 So the king said, “Who is in the court?” Now Haman had just entered the outer court of the king’s palace to ask the king about c hanging Mordecai on the gallows which he had prepared for him. 5 The king’s servants said to him, “Look, Haman is standing in the court.” And the king said, “Let him come in.” 6 So Haman came in and the king said to him, “What is to be done for the man whom the king desires to honor?” Now Haman thought d to himself, “Whom would the king desire to honor more than me?” 7 So Haman said to the king, “For the man whom the king desires to honor, 8 let a royal robe be brought which the king has worn, and the horse on which the king has ridden, and on whose head a royal crown has been placed; 9 and let the robe and the horse be handed over to one of the king’s most noble officials.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  In the short summer night she learnt so much. She would have thought a woman would have died of shame. Instead of which, the shame died. Shame, which is fear: the deep organic shame, the old, old physical fear which crouches in the bodily roots of us, and can only be chased away by the sensual fire, at last it was roused up and routed by the phallic hunt of the man, and she came to the very heart of the jungle of herself. She felt, now, she had come to the real bedrock of her nature, and was essentially shameless. She was her sensual self, naked and unashamed. She felt a triumph, almost a vainglory. So! That was how it was! That was life! That was how oneself really was! There was nothing left to disguise or be ashamed of. She shared her ultimate nakedness with a man, another being. And what a reckless devil the man was! really like a devil! One had to be strong to bear him. But it took some getting at, the core of the physical jungle, the last and deepest recess of organic shame. The phallus alone could explore it. And how he had pressed in on her! And how, in fear, she had hated it. But how she had really wanted it! She knew now. At the bottom of her soul, fundamentally, she had needed this phallic hunting out, she had secretly wanted it, and she had believed that she would never get it. Now suddenly there it was, and a man was sharing her last and final nakedness, she was shameless. What liars poets and everybody were! They made one think one wanted sentiment. When what one supremely wanted was this piercing, consuming, rather awful sensuality. To find a man who dared do it, without shame or sin or final misgiving! If he had been ashamed afterwards, and made one feel ashamed, how awful! What a pity most men are so doggy, a bit shameful, like Clifford! Like Michaelis even! Both sensually a bit doggy and humiliating. The supreme pleasure of the mind! And what is that to a woman? What is it, really, to the man either! He becomes merely messy and doggy, even in his mind. It needs sheer sensuality even to purify and quicken the mind. Sheer fiery sensuality, not messiness. Ah God, how rare a thing a man is! They are all dogs that trot and sniff and copulate. To have found a man who was not afraid and not ashamed! She looked at him now, sleeping so like a wild animal asleep, gone, gone in the remoteness of it. She nestled down, not to be away from him.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  It chanced one day that a vain simple young lady, by name Madam Lisetta da Ca[226] Quirino, wife of a great merchant who was gone with the galleys into Flanders, came with other ladies to confess to this same holy friar, at whose feet kneeling and having, like a true daughter of Venice as she was (where the women are all feather-brained), told him part of her affairs, she was asked of him if she had a lover. Whereto she answered, with an offended air, 'Good lack, sir friar, have you no eyes in your head? Seem my charms to you such as those of yonder others? I might have lovers and to spare, an I would; but my beauties are not for this one nor that. How many women do you see whose charms are such as mine, who would be fair in Paradise?' Brief, she said so many things of this beauty of hers that it was a weariness to hear. Fra Alberto incontinent perceived that she savoured of folly and himseeming she was a fit soil for his tools, he fell suddenly and beyond measure in love with her; but, reserving blandishments for a more convenient season, he proceeded, for the nonce, so he might show himself a holy man, to rebuke her and tell her that this was vainglory and so forth. The lady told him he was an ass and knew not what one beauty was more than another, whereupon he, unwilling to vex her overmuch, took her confession and let her go away with the others. [Footnote 226: Venetian contraction of _Casa_, house. Da Ca Quirino, of the Quirino house or family.]

• From Hot Rods: Gay Erotic Stories (2011)

  Think about your sister and the man she’s dating who has the same name as your father. Your brother’s girlfriend is the spitting image of your mother’s psyche. You can tell when you are pleasing a man, when your boy is happy. Say: “Sit on me.” Say: “I want to see your face.” Press your palms against the tight smooth skin of his back as he lifts himself off your chest, his face toward the window. Hold onto him so that you stay inside while he slowly turns to face you. Watch his expression change as he says: “Don’t take it out. No, no, no, don’t take it out.” That expression on the edge of abandonment. Say: “My god, but you are so beautiful.” Think how in just under an hour—or has it been longer?—you’ve gone through six different positions. Ha, movement! you think, as you think of your shiatsu guy. Nothing stagnant about this. Think about how the way we fuck tells us truths about ourselves, about the way we want to live our lives. Feel proud of yourself. Feel amazed at how a fag like you who has gone through a childhood and adolescence of ridicule and bullying, his twenties of being made fun of by men and women he could not fuck… think how you are now a big fucking homo daddy. A pleasurer of boys. Feel proud to discover the joy of this, the profound sensation of being inside someone and satisfying him. Feel wonder at how your body has developed in a way that has… in a way that…and all the time you’re thinking these thoughts, urge your boy to keep bouncing like that. Say to him: “Use my cock to pleasure yourself. It’s all for you, baby.” Until he comes on your chest. Beautiful warm ribbons that reach your neck and your face and the pillow to the side of your head. Watch him breathe and smile and his chest rise and fall and the darkgreen tattoo of the swallow with it. Let him straighten his legs and lie on you, his lovely skinny body against yours, cupped in yours, the great largeness of you, and feel his cock press against your middle and your erection. Say to him: “You’re still hard.” And he’ll say, yes, I know, he’ll say, that’s what you do to me, and he’ll put his mouth close to your ear and whisper: “It’s your turn.” He’ll whisper in your ear: “Open up.” And you do, because you like opening up to men who want to be inside you, who want to know you, who will rename you with terms of endearment like: Baby. Like: Mister Professor. Like: Daddy.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  8 Then David said on that day, “Whoever strikes the Jebusites, let him go up through the [underground] water shaft to strike the lame and the blind, who are detested by David’s soul [because of their arrogance].” So [for that reason] they say, “The blind or the lame (Jebusites) shall not come into the [royal] house [of Israel].” [1 Chr 11:6 ] 9 So David lived in the stronghold and called it the City of David. And he built all around [the surrounding area] from the b Millo [fortification] and inward. 10 David became greater and greater, for the LORD , the God of hosts (armies), was with him. 11 Now Hiram the king of Tyre sent messengers to David with cedar trees, carpenters, and stonemasons; and they built a house (palace) for David. 12 And David knew that the LORD had established him as king over Israel, and that He had exalted his kingdom for His people Israel’s sake. 13 David took more c concubines and wives from Jerusalem, after he came from Hebron; and more sons and daughters were born to him. 14 And these are the names of those who were born to him in Jerusalem: Shammua, Shobab, Nathan, Solomon, 15 Ibhar, Elishua, Nepheg, Japhia, 16 Elishama, Eliada, and Eliphelet. War with the Philistines 17 When the Philistines heard that David had been anointed king over Israel, all the Philistines went up to look for him, but he heard about it and went down to the d stronghold. 18 Now the Philistines had come and spread out [for battle] in the Valley of Rephaim. 19 David inquired of the LORD , saying, “Shall I go up against the Philistines? Will You hand them over to me?” And the LORD said to David, “Go up, for I will certainly hand them over to you.” 20 So David came to Baal-perazim, and he defeated them there, and said, “The LORD has broken through my enemies before me, like a breakthrough of water.” So he named that place Baal-perazim (master of breakthroughs). 21 The Philistines abandoned their [pagan] idols there, so David and his men took them away [to be burned]. 22 The Philistines came up once again and spread out in the Valley of Rephaim. 23 When David inquired of the LORD , He said, “You shall not go up, but circle around behind them and come at them in front of the balsam trees. 24 “And when you hear the sound of marching in the tops of the balsam trees, then you shall pay attention and act promptly, for at that time the LORD will have gone out before you to strike the army of the Philistines.” 25 David did just as the LORD had commanded him, and struck down the Philistines from Geba as far as Gezer. 2 Samuel 6 Peril in Moving the Ark 1 A GAIN DAVID gathered together all the chosen men of Israel, thirty thousand.

• From Vox (1992)

  134 I am in charge here, I am going to see this person's penis get hard, and even though I have a smoldering yeast problem and so can't really have full-fledged sex I am going to have my way with this person somehow. It was probably that Venezuelan ball-twirling screamer that put me in that mood, now that I think back. I mean, I felt powerful and shrewd and effortlessly in control and ev erything else I usually don't feel. I cut open the packet of creamed chipped and I said, musingly, 'My grandmother was very careful about money—she always used to say that she was as tight as the bark on a tree. And I used to think about what that really would feel like, whether bark does feel tight to the inner wood of the tree. I used to put on my jeans and take them off, thinking about that.' Lawrence said, 'Really!' I said, 'Yeah, although actually I didn't like my jeans to be at all tight, even then. I liked them loose. The appeal was the rough fabric, and the rough stitching, very barklike, the appeal was of being in this sort of complete male embrace, but then when you took them off, being all smooth and curved.' Lawrence nodded seriously. So I said, making the leap, I said, 'And when I started getting my legs waxed, which is quite an expensive little procedure, I also thought of that phrase, as tight as the bark on a tree, when Leona, my waxer, began putting the little warm wax strips on my legs and letting them solidify for an instant and ripping them off. ' I said, 'In fact, I just had my legs waxed yesterday.' Law rence said, 'Is that right?' and I said, 'Yes, it's amazing

• From Unbought and Unbossed: Transgressive Black Women, Sexuality, and Representation (2014)

  To return, then, to Sula's quality of life, even on her deathbed, Sula unapologetically and boldly asserts her right to subjectivity. In her final conversation with Nel, which occurs shortly before Sula's death, Sula expresses no regrets about her unconventional and transgressive lifestyle. Despite the fact that she is an anathema in the Bottom, Sula (still) offers no apologies but, rather, takes particular pride in her unconventional status. Whereas other black women who lived lives of conformity in traditional roles "had had the sweetness sucked from their breath" (122) and were dying, Sula, even in her ill-stricken state, differentiates herself not only in how she lived her life but also in how she is dying-triumphantly: unencumbered. She transgresses, then, even in death and transgresses as dying. And, what she has "to show for it," as she asserts to Nel, is her "mind" and "what goes on in it. Which is to say, I got Me" (143, emphasis mine). Her possession, as well as evocation, of a "me-ness"-unrestricted, uninhibited, and unregulated by established sociocommunal boundaries-privileges paradigms of black womanhood (in/and community), thereby offering a restructuring, a shifting politics if you will, based on Sula's experiential and existential conditions. What has transpired throughout her life and becomes further concretized at its end, does not advance a reinscription of communal paradigms, at the crux of which are family, reproduction, heteropatriarchal models, or nationalist configurations that "normalize" a regulatory black "nation-state" wherein women perform racialized gender and sexual roles. As such, it becomes emblematic, to revert to my earlier arguments, of "alternatives"-of a postmodern blackness that is at once expansive and inclusive where politics of race, gender, and sexuality are concerned-rather than of communally derived constructions of "blackness" that operate along a unilateral (exclusive/ isolated racial) axis.

• From Unbought and Unbossed: Transgressive Black Women, Sexuality, and Representation (2014)

  First Lady Michelle Obama, born in 1964 in the midst of the civil rights, black nationalist, feminist, and sexual liberation movements, might be "read"-if we are to engage or pay close attention to the semiotics of race, racialized gendered sexuality, and attire-as the embodiment of a particular duality. She embodies a certain "postraciality," if even illusory, coupled with a postmodern blackness, which I have discussed throughout this work. That is, she embodies a certain complexity of blackness, interestingly one that both deploys and attenuates respectability, that is not unitary, stagnant, or homogeneous, which is especially evident in her attire and fashion sense, which prompts attention and analogies to another First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy. While her attire is characterized by traditional style (propriety), it is simultaneously marked with a unique distinctiveness that stands out, goes beyond and exceeds-or transgresses-the standard and the basic. In fact, it even challenges what constitutes "the norm." This sensibility is typified most transparently in her choice of fashion and style, particularly cut and colors: vibrant and lively (rather than muted, dull, or subdued) yet not over-the-top outrageous or anomalous. Equally significant, Michelle Obama's deliberate exposure of her toned, muscular, and defined arms is emblematic of a certain subjectivity, agency, and orchestrated self-posturing-an "unbought and unbought" gesture-in which reverberates a body in ownership of its own display, which is consequential especially in light of the historical ways in which black women's bodies have been on public display, both literally and figuratively, at the orchestration of others. She transcends and strategically subverts, then, historical ways of situating black female sexuality in that hers is not on literal public display: not, that is, on a slave auction block or exploited in museums with exposed genitalia like the Venus Hottentotwith her sexuality conspicuously invoked or exposed.' Yet, here lies the complexity and even tension of blackness in America: her sexuality is "on display" figuratively, metaphorically, and in another less conspicuous form: in the constant, ever-present fixation on her body. That is, not only a fixation on its physicality or its very physique, but also on what shrouds it (clothing) and, equally if not more provocative, what it shrouds: a latent, everpresent sexuality covertly engaged publicly vis-a-vis the discursive that ranges from pregnancy rumors-a (hyper)sexualizing and encoding of sorts-to the iconographic. The August 2012 issue of the Spanish magazine Fuera de Serie illustrates this point. Its cover image shows Michelle Obama's face photoshopped onto French artist Marie-Guillemine Benoist's classic 18oo Portrait d une negresse, which famously depicts with partial nudity a (former) enslaved black woman in headscarf and white gown with one breast exposed. [image file=img/img0005.jpg] FIGURE C.1 Marie-Guillemine Benoist, Portrait d une Negresse, 1800.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  8 And from Betah and Berothai, cities of Hadadezer, King David took an immense quantity of bronze. 9 When Toi king of Hamath heard about David’s defeat of all the forces of Hadadezer, 10 Toi sent d Joram his son to King David to e greet and congratulate him for his battle and defeat of Hadadezer; for Hadadezer had been at war with Toi. Joram brought with him articles of silver, gold, and bronze [as gifts]. 11 King David also dedicated these [gifts] to the LORD , along with the silver and gold that he had dedicated from all the nations which he subdued: 12 from Aram (Syria), Moab, the Ammonites, the Philistines, and Amalek, and from the spoil of Hadadezer the son of Rehob, king of Zobah. 13 So David made a name for himself when he returned from killing 18,000 f Arameans (Syrians) in the Valley of Salt. 14 He put garrisons in Edom; in all Edom he put garrisons, and all the Edomites became servants to David. And the LORD helped him wherever he went. 15 So David reigned over all Israel, and continued to administer justice and righteousness for all his people. 16 Joab the son of Zeruiah was [commander] over the army; Jehoshaphat the son of Ahilud was recorder (secretary); 17 Zadok the son of Ahitub and Ahimelech the son of Abiathar were the [chief] priests, and Seraiah was the scribe; 18 Benaiah the son of Jehoiada was [head] over both the Cherethites and Pelethites [the king’s bodyguards]; and David’s sons were g chief [confidential] advisers (officials) [to the king]. [1 Chr 18:17 ] 2 Samuel 9 David’s Kindness to Mephibosheth 1 A ND DAVID said, “Is there still anyone left of the house (family) of Saul to whom I may show kindness for Jonathan’s sake?” 2 There was a servant of the house of Saul whose name was Ziba, so they called him to David. And the king said to him, “Are you Ziba?” He said, “I am your servant.” 3 And the king said, “Is there no longer anyone left of the house (family) of Saul to whom I may show the goodness and graciousness of God?” Ziba replied to the king, “There is still a son of Jonathan, [one] whose feet are crippled.” [1 Sam 20:14–17 ] 4 So the king said to him, “Where is he?” And Ziba replied to the king, “He is in the house of Machir the son of Ammiel, in Lo-debar.” 5 Then King David sent word and had him brought from the house of Machir the son of Ammiel, from Lo-debar. 6 Mephibosheth the son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, came to David and fell face down and lay himself down [in respect].

• From Girls & Sex (2016)

  CHAPTER 4Hookups and Hang-UpsHolly, a sophomore at a private East Coast college, volunteered to talk to me for a specific reason. She wanted it known that some college girls, girls such as she, enjoyed the so-called hookup culture. “In books and articles they always say that if a girl sleeps around she’ll get called a slut or that all girls only really want relationships,” she said, sweeping her strawberry blond hair back over one shoulder. “Otherwise, it’s just about how hookup culture is good for guys, and how they feel this sense of accomplishment when they’ve had sex with a number of girls. But I’ll just put it out there: I feel accomplished after I have sex with someone that I wanted to have sex with. Last Thursday morning I woke up and apparently everyone in my sorority house knew I’d had sex because they’d heard the bed squeaking through the ceiling. And everyone goes, ‘Holly! High five! You get it, girl!’ I felt accomplished, just like a boy would. I felt like, ‘I went out, I looked good, I showed myself off, and I got it last night. Good for me.’” What’s Sauce for the Gander As with oral sex in the 1990s, discussions of the current “hookup culture” are fertile ground for good old-fashioned media-induced panics. The take-away from most reports tends to swing extreme: Hookups are terrible for girls! Hookups are liberating for girls! Girls are being victimized! Girls are going wild! Here is what they rarely say: young people are not, in fact, having more sex than they used to—at least, if you define sex by intercourse. The seismic tectonic shift in premarital sexual behavior really took place with the Baby Boom generation, according to Elizabeth Armstrong, a sociologist at the University of Michigan who, with her colleagues, has conducted the most comprehensive research on college student hookups. That was when the introduction of the Pill, the rise of the women’s movement, and relaxed attitudes about supervision of “coeds” ignited the sexual revolution. Nor did today’s young ’uns invent the concept of casual sex. What has changed, however, among college students and increasingly among high schoolers, is that when relationships do occur, instead of starting with a date, they often begin with noncommitted sexual contact. Rather than being a product of intimacy, then, sex has become its precursor, or sometimes its replacement. That’s what is meant by the term hookup culture. “Casual sex was happening before in college,” said Debby Herbenick at Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute, “but there wasn’t the sense that it’s what you should be doing. It is now. I have students who say people should be able to have no emotions in sex, and if you can’t, there’s something wrong with you and you’re missing out.”

• From Unbought and Unbossed: Transgressive Black Women, Sexuality, and Representation (2014)

  "With a twist that was all her own imagination," as the narratorial consciousness indicates, "she lived out her days exploring her own thoughts and emotions, giving them full reign, feeling no obligation to please anybody unless their pleasure pleased her" (ii8). In her quest to please herself, she, upon her return to the Bottom, disrupts social "norms." A wanderer and neither wife nor mother, she exists incongruously with the women of the Bottom and concomitantly "violates" community sanctions: she sleeps with other women's husbands (including Nel's), wears no underwear to church functions, and, far worse by community standards, putatively has sex with white men. It is Sula's sexual "escapades" with white men that diametrically oppose the script, as well as flout the tenets of black nationalism, which explicitly demands black women's sexual fidelity-to black men-as a way of countering dominant society's stigmatization, denigration, and association of black women with sexual deviance and pathology, as well as in allegiance with nationalist ideologies.

• From Emotional Beats: How to Easily Convert your Writing into Palpable Feelings (2018)

  Had I gone into the light, I suppose the shock paddles would have failed.”He looked a t t he l i ne sna k ing along the str ee t i n f r ont of the small r e stau ra nt w a i t ing for a t a ble.A cupboard creaked open, clanked shut. Steps brushed across a carpet, then an armchair sighed under the weight of a person sitting down. Glass chinked against glass, liquid sloshed. She waited—no toast was spoken, no glass clanked against another glass. He was alone inside.He made some crackerjack suggestions.He belonged to the much-vaunted warrior class.She crossed a refuse-strewn street.He slammed his sword back into its sheath.He held the spear in his hands. It was a beautiful weapon. The head was made from dark bronze, tapering gracefully into a fine, fearfully sharp point. The edges glittered in the tent’s half-light. It was fastened to the haft by thirty rivets of gold. The haft was made of rowan, darkened with age, worn smooth and polished by the grip of many hands through the years. He hefted the spear, testing its weight. It was perfectly balanced, as if made specifically for him.Each baby’s face puckered and grimaced, and a last feeble protest escaped on its warm milky breath.Suddenly, it was all salty kisses and sandy toes.He bent down, grabbed the crate and hefted it.The iris on the wall started whirling, emitting a laser web that swept back and forth over the wall.A joystick control popped up from the control panel. A montage of views from the ship’s cameras was overlaid over the cockpit window.It was really not so much a book as a thick stack of pages held together with three leather loops.He slowly, relentlessly materialized out of the dark, his cloak swishing, his black eyes sparkling with joy, his red lips nuzzling the white, submissive, swooning neck and his incisors, just slightly showing, beginning to glisten.He watched himself thinking, as though discovering a new, unfamiliar country where thoughts depended on each other, interlocked. The thought he was handling would fit into the next one he had; he was driving. He had never driven thoughts before. They had come, wanted or unwanted. Now he was telling them where to go.The dogs bared their teeth, lips curled, snarling. Sharp claws scratched and clawed at the baluster rods, massive paws attempting to knock me off. The dogs barked, jumped, banged against the railing. White foam dripped off razor-sharp teeth.He mock-buffed his fingernails on his inexistent lapel with pride.Sweet music leaked into the night.

• From Unbought and Unbossed: Transgressive Black Women, Sexuality, and Representation (2014)

  Renay exercises not only her agency, but also her transcendent abilities in that she transgresses Jerome's patriarchal authority. Renay, now unencumbered by Jerome's misogynist and confining mandates or her heterosexist marriage with him, articulates her refusal to leave Terry and return to Jerome and "the dirt." In her "talking back," to borrow bell hooks's terminology, Renay denigrates Jerome in language that reverberates with the nationalist discourse that Jerome embodies in order to illustrate the ways in which he, even by certain nationalist standards, does not meet the requirements for manhood.49 Renay's "back talk" not only demonstrates her unwillingness to be "policed" by Jerome and by nationalist and larger societal circumscriptions for women, but, of far greater import, it signifies her evolution from objectivity to subjectivity-that is, from a largely unautonomous being to an actualized, empowered, liberated self. "Could It Be Met in this Form?": Shockley and the Ideological Subversion of Convention In 1969, just five years prior to the publication of Loving Her, in the San Francisco Times, Marvin Garson-in a move recognizing as well as drawing upon the liberatory politics of the black nationalist call for "Black Power"-makes a similar call: for "Queer Power." Ruminating on the ways in which black people had, through self-determination, appropriation, and self-definition, revitalized the very meaning of "blackness," he uses the (trans)formative power of (racial) self-definition as a model. Once "it was impolite to suggest that a Negro gentleman might have black skin," and "now it's `Say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud."' Perhaps, "in a few years [...I queers will be saying something like, `Don't keep trying to rise above it-kiss me, darling, I'm queer and I love it. "so This redefinition of what's in a name, particularly governing constructions of "lesbian" identity, is precisely what, in part, Shockley's novel anticipates and problematizes. The nexus of black and queer power, a struggle against a desexualized blackness or a construction of sexuality divorced of race, is precisely what Loving Her achieves decades before any black and/ or queer theoretical postulations. Exploring vis-a-vis literary conventions, transgressive embodiment, and racialized expressions of sexual "difference," Shockley not only anticipates but serves as a foundational apparatus and precursor for (post) modern discourses on black sexuality studies, specifically black queer-or "quare"-studies. As Shockley and the same-gender loving movement illuminate the cultural imperative and intersections of race and sexuality (as an act, behavior, and identity), black queer studies follows in a similar tradition. Simply put, Shockley serves as a predecessor for black queer theorists in her focus on the nexus of race and sexuality as black cultural imperatives. In the spirit of broad inclusivity, and not to perpetuate a sense of communal divisiveness, "black queer" encapsulates "and, in effect, names the specificity of the historical and cultural differences"-that simultaneous dialogic sameness and difference-"that shape the experiences and expressions of `queerness. "51

• From Unbought and Unbossed: Transgressive Black Women, Sexuality, and Representation (2014)

  Even as hooks recognizes Sula's unwillingness to accept or capitulate to the social modalities and communal proscriptions ascribed to blacks and women, she asserts that Sula does not constitute radical black female subjectivity, insomuch as Sula, while reveling in "self-assertion and [a] celebration of autonomy," is "we also know [...] not self-actualized enough to stay alive."45 "Her awareness of what it means to be a radical subject does not," hooks purports, "cross the boundaries of public and private; hers is a privatized self-discovery."46 hooks's reader-response critical approach, as well as her characterological assessment of Sula, presents at least two dilemmas. First, whether deliberately or inadvertently, it equates existential or metaphysical notions of living/being with actualization, whereby Sula's dying-or, "inability" to live-is indicative of Sula's lack of self-actualization. What I suggest is that Sula's death in the narrative should not be confounded and read as indicative of a lack of self-actualization, consciousness, or subjectivity. Rather, it reflects more acutely the limited options (especially when Sula was written) for female characters like Sula who challenge racial/sociocommunal boundaries and transgress restrictions, especially those pertaining to female sexuality and marriage, and who ultimately choose a life of "self-discovery" rather than one of racial uplift and conformity. As literary scholar Mary Helen Washington avers, "The demands of racial uplift and racial loyalty" have meant that such characters-those "who do not uphold these ideals"-are invariably characterized with a fate of conformity, expiation for their perceived transgressive behavior, and far worse: death 47 Yet, it also typifies other attributes that death represents, to revert back to Sharon Holland, in that the dead-and I would argue, in this case, also the dying (Sula)-operates "as an embodied entity or subject capable of transgression."48 In Sula's instance, death/dying marks her destiny, and, even in the process of dying, she does so unconventionally and with an unbreakable spirit of autonomy, nonconformity, and subjectivity. She herself, upon her deathbed, revels in the knowledge that she is unlike other black women dying "like a stump" across the nation. "Me," Sula notes, "I'm going down like one of those redwoods. I sure did live in this world," a point to which I will return momentarily (143). Second, and of even greater magnitude, hooks asserts that Sula's "self-discovery" is "privatized" and thereby fails to extend beyond public and private boundaries. Given that the personal is political, as many scholars and second-wave feminists have argued convincingly, it is precisely because Sula's personal "indiscretions" and recalcitrant actions are not privatized and are, indeed, exposed and open for public consumption, that her personal transgressions take on a larger sociocommunal and political significance and educe public/ communal responses.

• From Unbought and Unbossed: Transgressive Black Women, Sexuality, and Representation (2014)

  Published in 1973 while Morrison was an editor at Random House in New York City, where she created a list in black literature reflective of the racial consciousness of the black political movements, Sula dialogizes not only black nationalist ideologies, but also black feminist sensibilities, including intersectionality, and the sexual liberation prompted by the sexual revolution. In that same year, in the Roe v. Wade decision, the Supreme Court decreed that abortion was legal, a landmark ruling in tandem and contemporaneous with the liberal politics of the sexual revolution. Sula functions as the material embodiment of black female subjectivity that embraces blackness that neither compromises nor negates her woman-freedom or liberation, sexually or otherwise. Functioning, then, outside the parameters of sociocommunal prescriptions and modalities for women, Sula transgresses convention and concomitantly invests in her "self" rather than live a life of conformity.30 Sula is unlike other Bottom women because she uncharacteristically repudiates conventional life (particularly marriage and motherhood), as well as transgresses the classical black female script, whose tenets her various enactments of "misbehavior" resist and subvert. In her obstinate and fierce refusal to marry and "have some babies" to "settle" her down-as her grandmother Eva suggests immediately upon Sula's return to Medallion-Sula insists that rather than "make somebody else," she wants to invent her "self" (92). Her refusal to acquiesce or conform is transparent, then, in her transgression against communal expectations for women regarding reproduction, which also undermines a fundamental tenet of the (black) nationalist agenda: that black women should "make babies for the revolution." As reproduction is fundamental to nationalist paradigms and agendas, Sula's refusal to reproduce also calls into question and scrutinizes nationalist visions of (an imagined) black nation. She challenges a modality centered around reproduction and presents another model-a "new world blackness," to revert to an earlier argument-that destabilizes and presents a postmodern black notion of "nation." At the crux of this new world black subjectivity is not an intrinsic expectation that black women reproduce. It is critically important, then, that shortly after Eva encourages Sula to marry, bear children, and thereby conform to the roles society ascribes to women, Sula, going against all cultural ethics, commits her to a nursing home: "At the sight of Eva being carried out [...] Sula [stood] holding some papers against the wall, at the bottom of which, just above the word `guardian,' she very carefully wrote Miss Sula Mae Peace" (94, emphasis mine). Sula committed Eva to a nursing home and took particular delight in that act, illustrating her disregard and contempt for both cultural ethics and (Bottom) communal mores. Her pride in, and determination to preserve, her independence and single-woman status is evidenced by her careful and deliberate inscription of "Miss" on the documents and her unwillingness to allow exterior forces, even her own grandmother, to threaten her agency and infringe upon her lifestyle, autonomy, and woman-freedom.

• From Girls & Sex (2016)

  That phrase, “proud of my body,” continued to bedevil me. On one hand, I admired the young women’s bravado, their willingness to be overtly on the prowl, their refusal to be shamed for how they did or didn’t dress. At the same time, only certain bodies were allowed to be a source of “pride,” to be seen as sexual, to deflect shame, and Holly’s had not always been one of them. As a freshman, she was twenty-five pounds heavier than when we first met—she’d dieted and worked out all summer to lose the weight—and her wardrobe had been considerably more conservative. “I would never have worn anything skimpy because I wasn’t happy with how I looked,” she said. “Presenting myself in skimpy attire would have had a very negative impact on my mental state, because there would be those people, especially boys, who would say, ‘She’s fat and she should wear something else.’” It’s understandable that Holly would feel good about showing off the “right” body—it’s affirming to attract male approval and even female envy—but it’s hard to see her outfits as “liberating” when the threat of ridicule always lurks. One of her sorority sisters, for instance, had recently gained weight. “It’s not that she couldn’t wear skimpy clothes,” Holly said. “But she knows how she would feel if there were asshole-y boys who were like, ‘She’s a fat girl.’”

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  42 When the Philistine looked around and saw David, he derided and disparaged him because he was [just] a young man, with a ruddy complexion, and a handsome appearance. 43 The Philistine said to David, “Am I a dog, that you come to me with [shepherd’s] staffs?” And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. 44 The Philistine also said to David, “Come to me, and I will give your flesh to the birds of the sky and the beasts of the field.” 45 Then David said to the Philistine, “You come to me with a sword, a spear, and a n javelin, but I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have taunted. 46 “This day the LORD will hand you over to me, and I will strike you down and cut off your head. And I will give the corpses of the army of the Philistines this day to the birds of the sky and the wild beasts of the earth, so that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, 47 and that this entire assembly may know that the LORD does not save with the sword or with the spear; for the battle is the LORD ’s and He will hand you over to us.” 48 When the Philistine rose and came forward to meet David, David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet the Philistine. 49 David put his hand into his bag and took out a stone and slung it, and it struck the Philistine on his forehead. The stone penetrated his forehead, and he fell face down on the ground. 50 So David triumphed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone, and he struck down the Philistine and killed him; but there was no sword in David’s hand. 51 So he ran and stood over the Philistine, grasped his sword and drew it out of its sheath and killed him, and cut off his head with it. When the Philistines saw that their [mighty] champion was dead, they fled. 52 The men of Israel and Judah stood with a shout and pursued the Philistines as far as the entrance to the valley and the gates of Ekron. And the [fatally] wounded Philistines fell along the way to Shaaraim, even as far as Gath and Ekron. 53 The sons of Israel returned from their pursuit of the Philistines and plundered their camp. 54 Then David took the head of the Philistine and brought it to Jerusalem, but he put his weapons in his tent.