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Karen Joy Fowler

Karen Joy Fowler Biography

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“Sylvia’s first impression of Allegra was that no one had ever before had such a beautiful baby. Jocelyn’s first impression of Grigg was that he had nice eyelashes and a funny name, and didn’t interest her in the slightest. Prudie’s first impression of Bernadette was that she was startling to look at and dull if you listened, which you hardly ever had to do. Bernadette’s first impression of Prudie was that, in all her long years, she had rarely seen such a frightened young woman. Grigg’s first impression of Jocelyn was that she appeared to think sharing an elevator with him for a few floors was some sort of punishment. Allegra’s first impression of Sylvia was blurred with her first impression of the larger world. For me? she’d asked herself back when she had no words and no way to even know she was asking. And then, when Sylvia, and then, when Daniel had first looked into her eyes — More for me?”

JoyBabiesChildbirthFirst Impressions
Book:The Jane Austen Book Club
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“In 2004, Jacques Derrida said that a change was under way. Torture damages the inflicter as well as the inflicted. It’s no coincidence that one of the Abu Ghraib torturers came to the military directly from a job as a chicken processor. It might be slow, Derrida said, but eventually the spectacle of our abuse of animals will be intolerable to our sense of who we are.”

TortureDamageAbu GhraibSense Of BeingJacques DerridaAbuse Of Animals
Book:We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
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“Every mother can easily imagine losing a child. Motherhood is always half loss anyway. The three-year-old is lost at five, the five-year-old at nine. We consort with ghosts, even as we sit and eat with, scold and kiss, their current corporeal forms. We speak to people who have vanished and, when they answer us, they do the same. Naturally, the information in these speeches is garbled in the translation.”

PeopleYearsChildrenFormMotherThreeLostSpeakLossAnswersHalfFiveImagineInformationKissingSpeechLosingCurrentsMotherhoodNineGhostFive YearsThree YearsTranslationsFive Year OldsThree Year OldsLosing A Child
Book:Black Glass: Short Fictions
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“The happening and telling are very different things. This doesn’t mean that the story isn’t true, only that I honestly don’t know anymore if I really remember it or only remember how to tell it. Language does this to our memories, simplifies, solidifies, codifies, mummifies. An off-told story is like a photograph in a family album. Eventually it replaces the moment it was meant to capture.”

IfsKnowsMeanDoeDifferentMomentsStoriesRememberLanguageMemoriesHappeningsPhotographAlbumsHonestlyDifferent ThingsCaptureOur MemoriesSimplify
Author:Karen Joy Fowler
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