I fell into shame like a suicide throws herself into a river. (253)

Two or three things I know for sure, and one is that I'd rather go naked than wear the coat the world has made for me.

Babies change things, open doors you thought were shut, close others. Make you into something you never been.

I did things I did not understand for reasons I could not begin to explain just to be in motion, to be trying to do something, change something in a world I wanted desperately to make over but could not imagine for myself.

I think I would have died if there hadn't been the women's movement.

And of course these days I feel like there is a nation of us - displaced southerners and children of the working class. We listen to Steve Earle, Mary J. Blige, and k.d. lang. We devour paperback novels and tell evil mean stories, value stubbornness above patience and a sense of humor more than a college education. We claim our heritage with a full appreciation of how often it has been disdained. And let me promise you, you do not want to make us angry.

Twenty years after we had left so fierce and proud, we were all right back where we had started, yoked to each other and the same old drama.