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Sarah Manguso

Sarah Manguso Books

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Liars

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“In fourth grade we played hard. The fifth-grade girls played four square, too, but they didn't jeer at each other when they played, and they hit the ball gently from square to square. Their slowness seemed deliberate, as if they were dancing. Their skirts brushed slowly against their knees as they swayed. It wasn't so much that they looked different; they just looked as if they knew they were being watched.”

Growing UpMale Gaze
Book:Very Cold People
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“In my experience nursing is waiting. The mother becomes the background against which the baby lives, becomes time. I used to exist against the continuity of time. Then I became the baby's continuity, a background of ongoing time for him to live against. I was the warmth and milk that was always there for him, the agent of comfort that was always there for him. My body, my life, became the landscape of my son's life. I am no longer merely a thing living in the world; I am a world.”

MotherTimeBabyMotherhoodChildNursingBabiesBreastfeedingBreastmilkSarah Manguso
Book:The Two Kinds of Decay
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“One day my mother asked me what color my eyes were, The bank teller had just said something about a cat's green eyes, and my mother had immediately said that her eyes were green, too. A cat's eyes were green; her eyes were green; what color were my eyes? If they were green, too, then the teller might congratulate my mother on having guessed right. She had no idea that a normal person would find it insane for a mother to ask her only child what color her eyes were. But I sensed that she was also trying to see what it would be like to be that unattached to me. She was practicing, to see what it would be like to hurt me, a lot, to show how much she loved me. She had to be careful. If anyone found out that she loved me, we'd both be in trouble. For a while I'd have to suffer, out in the open, the only girl without extra sneakers for gym class, but it was only because my mother's love was so much greater than all the other loves. It was that much more dangerous, so she had to love me in secret, absolutely unobserved by anyone, especially me.”

AvoidantMommy IssuesNeglected ChildrenUnattached
Book:Very Cold People
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