“Time and time again, it strikes me that the worst thing that can ever happen to an author is for people to read their book. That’s when they start to think about it, write about it, ask about it, talk about it, and eventually give it back to the author, chewed up, wet and slobbery like a tennis ball out of a dog’s mouth”
“Everything I write will be read as memoir, and the character I lay out in an essay will be mistaken for the very real and literal Lur who moves peacefully about the world. We are different people; she’s a character, I made her up. I’ve picked out her costumes, I’ve done her hair and make up, I’ve given her a tone of voice and a certain vibe that serves the purpose of her character progression. There’s no such thing as purely nonfictional nonfiction for this reason”
“My fear is that a woman, particularly a woman of colour, cannot exist in dignity, not as the character nor as the author. Her work must always draw from lived experience and so she must always operate within the framework of memoir, whether she likes it or not, whether she’s actually writing a memoir or not”
“Readings of her work extend the colonial and aggressive consumption of her self and her body and her body of work”