Ayiti

Roxane Gay is an award-winning literary voice praised for her fearless and vivid prose, and her debut collection Ayiti exemplifies the raw talent that made her “one of the voices of our age” (National Post, Canada). Clever a

Characters

Roxane Gay (7)

Gérard spends his days thinking about the many reasons he hates America that include but are not limited to the people, the weather, having to drive everywhere and having to go to school every day.

— Roxane Gay, amazon.com

first lines of books America

Everything I know about my family’s history, I know in fragments. We are the keepers of secrets. We are secrets ourselves. We try to protect each other from the geography of so much sorrow. I don’t know that we succeed.

— Roxane Gay, amazon.com

Family History Sorrow Personal History Ancestors

It is always when I am leaving work that I realize what an odd country Haiti is, with the Internet, computers, fax machines and photocopiers in offices and the people who use them living in shacks with the barest of amenities. We are a people living in two different times.

— Roxane Gay, amazon.com

Haiti Two Times Different Worlds

Progress is not kind and human nature cannot resist the lure of possibility.

— Roxane Gay, amazon.com

Progress Human Nature

He is such a beautiful man, but I do not tell him this. He would take it the wrong way. It is a strange thing in some men, this fear of their own beauty.

— Roxane Gay, amazon.com

Men Relationships Touch Beautiful People

Freedom, it seems, has a price. We are defined by what we are not and what we do not have.

— Roxane Gay, freedom

Freedom

You hate yourself for it, but you crave the stranger’s unwanted touch because the fight left in you is a reminder that you haven’t been broken. You haven’t been broken.

— Roxane Gay, amazon.com

Stranger Touch Feeling

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