“Being alive, she thought, just being alive and a woman was enough to make her vengeful protagonist behave as she did. Ruth didn’t need to dial it up. She didn’t need to change a word.”

The phenomenon that is “Trump” is a manifestation of patriarchal whiteness—the ghost still animating imperial and post-colonial machines—and its present incarnation carries the force of State violence to compel its attendant vision.

If someone as intelligent as Alexander Chee could believe in the occult, why couldn’t I? Perhaps the supernatural was not the opposite of natural, just the part of it that was yet to be explained.

“This is the peace of upper atmospheres. This is the idea of flying. The dream of it, of being that eagle, the sound of wind steadily pushing past our feathers.”

“Up here he no longer needed to hide his voice.”