"When I began writing The Bluest Eye, I was interested in something else. Not resistance to the contempt of others, ways to deflect it, but the far more tragic and disabling consequences of accepting rejection as legitimate, as selfevident.
I knew that some victims of powerful self-loathing turn out to be dangerous, violent, reproducing the enemy who has humiliated them over and over. Others surrender their identity; melt into a structure that delivers the strong persona they lack. Most others, however, grow beyond it.
But there are some who collapse, silently, anonymously, with no voice to express or acknowledge it. They are invisible. The death of self-esteem can occur quickly, easily in children, before their ego has “legs,” so to speak.
Couple the vulnerability of youth with indifferent parents, dismissive adults, and a world, which, in its language, laws, and images, re-enforces despair, and the journey to destruction is sealed." via
“The Reformatory,” by Tananarive Due “The Bear and the Nightingale,” by Katherine Arden “Fortune Smiles,” by Adam Johnson “World War Z,” by Max Brooks “Dare Me,” by Megan Abbott “Redshirts,” by John Scalzi “Knockemstiff,” by Donald Ray Pollock “The Lesser Dead,” by Christopher Buehlman “Come Closer,” by Sara Gran “FantasticLand,” by Mike Bockoven