Let’s call my mood melancholy; let’s call it remembrance. Or maybe let’s call it longing. Yes, let’s call it longing instead.

— Shannon Celebi

Mama wasn't dead...exactly. They all said she was, but when Elma was small, she has seen Mama creep into her room at night, half-naked, head all bloodied red like when they found her by the well that day, and Elma reckoned dead just meant pretendin' you couldn't move or breathe until nightfall when you got up and walked around like you was free.

— Shannon Celebi

My sister and I are so close that we finish each other’s sentences and often wonder whose memories belong to whom.

— Shannon Celebi

Of course, I rationalize the fear. I realize it’s not real, that my house isn’t burning down, that the deer aren’t going to kill me.

— Shannon Celebi

Okay, I’ll just jump right out and say it. I have anxiety issues.

— Shannon Celebi

Once upon a long ago time I was a girl with hopeful halos in my eyes—not unlike you—not a typical beauty but beautiful nonetheless, as all young girls tend to be in their prime, even if they don’t tend to know it.

— Shannon Celebi

She also understood there was a hole in her heart where her son should be, that she was a wicked, selfish woman for wishing him back.

— Shannon Celebi

She didn't tell him white folks couldn't love the same as coloreds. She couldn't love the same neither though, because more than half of her was white.

— Shannon Celebi

She sometimes fantasized too about killing him a little: a little poison in his pudding, a little flick-flick-flick with a fillet knife at his throat.

— Shannon Celebi

She was no stripper with a heart of gold, that was for sure. A heart of steel, more like.

— Shannon Celebi