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Quote by Dean Hughes

“What a storyteller does is *see* more than most of us. We say he's making up his stories, but he—or better yet, *she*—watches more carefully, and then tells us what we would have seen ourselves if we'd just stopped to look.”

Quote by Dean Hughes

Work

Before the Dawn

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Author

Dean Hughes
Dean Hughes

English biography, 120-180 words more

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“All of Life Her Grand Design (Sonnet 2840-2841) Silence sold as golden virtue, names erased in toxic ink - told to walk behind the man, never question, never think. We're more than borrowed titles, more than shadows wearing rings - we are roots of all survival, we are breath in everything. They built a world on domination, called tradition, called it fate, but every empire of oppression meets its end at woman's wake. Why must love erase her surname, why must birth deny her throne - she is the one who forms existence, yet there's nothing she can call her own! Every child that walks this planet, carries more than just one name - every mother is a cosmos, creation brews in her sacred flame. They said she came from a man's rib, but truth runs deeper than toxic lies, the world itself is carved from woman, all of life is her grand design.”

“Today, looking back on the moment I made the decision, I am aware that had I been twenty years younger, I probably wouldn’t have dared request that the case be heard in open court. I would have been too afraid of the looks: those damn looks that women of my generation have always had to contend with; those damn looks that make you waver in the morning between a dress and trousers, that follow you or ignore you, flatter you or embarrass you; those damn looks that seem to tell you who you are or what you’re worth, only to forsake you as you age. It was exactly that nerve Dominique pressed when he told me I should be glad my husband still desired me whenever he photographed me coming out of the bathroom. I was, no doubt, still susceptible to it. It’s foolish, but that’s how we were freer, more autonomous women, yet still afraid of being abandoned, still longing to be saved. Maybe the shame lifts once you hit seventy and no one looks at you any more. I don’t know. I wasn’t afraid of my wrinkles or my body.”

“Last time I walk these roads a man of good breeding pay five man to steal me so he can show me what an ugly woman was for. Right there in Torobe. Couldn't beat him wife because she from royal blood, so he bond me for that." "Kongori masters have always been cruel." "Low-wit donkey, the man was not my master, he was my kidnapper. A man would know the difference." "You could have run to a prefect." "A man." "A magistrate." "A man." "An elder with a kind ear, an inquisitor, a seer." "Man. Man. Man.”