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Quote by Ayana Mathis

“Mother was a beautiful young woman; the house was too plain, too small to contain her. I watched her; for the first time I understood that she had an inner life that didn't have anything to do with me or my brothers and sisters.”

Quote by Ayana Mathis

Book:The Twelve Tribes of Hattie
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The Twelve Tribes of Hattie

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Author

Ayana Mathis

Ayana Mathis is an American author born in 1973. Her works are known for their profound emotion and delicate narrative, particularly her debut novel 'The Twelve Tribes of Hattie', which received widespread acclaim. more

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“For years afterward, I had dreams in which my mother appeared in strange forms, her features sewn onto other beings in combinations that seemed both grotesque and profound: as a slippery white fish at the end of my hook, with a trout’s gaping, sorrowful mouth and her dark, shuttered eyes; as the elm tree at the edge of our property, its ragged clumps of tarnished gold leaves replaced by knotted skeins of her black hair; as the lame gray dog that lived on the Mueller’s property, whose mouth, her mouth, opened and closed in yearning and who never made a sound. As I grew older, I came to realize that death had been easy for my mother; to fear death, you must first have something to tether you to life. But she had not. It was as if she had been preparing for her death the entire time I knew her. One day she was alive; the next, not. And as Sybil said, she was lucky. For what more could we presume to ask from death — but kindness?”

DreamsDeath And DyingMothers
Book:The People in the Trees
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