“
Your daughter is ugly.
She knows loss intimately,
carries whole cities in her belly.
As a child, relatives wouldn’t hold her.
She was splintered wood and sea water.
They said she reminded them of the war.
On her fifteenth birthday you taught her
how to tie her hair like rope
and smoke it over burning frankincense.
You made her gargle rosewater
and while she coughed, said
macaanto girls like you shouldn’t smell
of lonely or empty.
You are her mother.
Why did you not warn her,
hold her like a rotting boat
and tell her that men will not love her
if she is covered in continents,
if her teeth are small colonies,
if her stomach is an island
if her thighs are borders?
What man wants to lay down
and watch the world burn
in his bedroom?
Your daughter’s face is a small riot,
her hands are a civil war,
a refugee camp behind each ear,
a body littered with ugly things
but God,
doesn’t she wear
the world well.
”
”
Warsan Shire
“
You learn that the only way to get rock-star power as a girl is to be a groupie and bare your breasts and get chosen for the night. We learn that the only way to get anywhere is through men. And it's a lie.
”
”
Kathleen Hanna
“
all those nights with the phone warming the side of my face like the sun. you made jokes and sure, i may have even laughed a little but mostly you were not funny. mostly you were beautiful. mostly you were unremarkable, even your mediocrity was unremarkable. when friends would ask ‘what do you like about him?” i would think of you holding a bouquet against the denim of your shirt. i mean, you had my face as your screensaver for gods sake, do you know what that does for the self-esteem of girl with an apparition for a father?
hey, do you remember the quiet between us in all those restaurants? all the other couples engrossed in deep conversation and us, as quiet as a closed mouth.
that one afternoon when i asked ‘why do you love me?’ and you replied as quick as a toin coss ‘because you’re mad, because you’re crazy’ and i said ‘why else?’ and you said ‘that mouth, i love that mouth’ and i collapsed into myself like a sheet right out of the dryer.
you clean, beautiful, unremarkable boy, raised by a pleasant mother, was i just a riot you loved to watch up close? there were times i picked arguments just so that we could have something to talk about.
last week, i walked through the part of the city i loved when i still loved you, our old haunts. you know, even the ghosts have moved on.
”
”
Warsan Shire
“
There were plotters, there was no doubt about it. Some had been ordinary people who'd had enough. Some were young people with no money who objected to the fact that the world was run by old people who were rich. Some were in it to get girls. And some had been idiots as mad as Swing, with a view of the world just as rigid and unreal, who were on the side of what they called 'the people'. Vimes had spent his life on the streets, and had met decent men and fools and people who'd steal a penny from a blind beggar and people who performed silent miracles or desperate crimes every day behind the grubby windows of little houses, but he'd never met The People.
People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn't that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people.
As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn't measure up. What would run through the streets soon enough wouldn't be a revolution or a riot. It'd be people who were frightened and panicking. It was what happened when the machinery of city life faltered, the wheels stopped turning and all the little rules broke down. And when that happened, humans were worse than sheep. Sheep just ran; they didn't try to bite the sheep next to them.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Night Watch (Discworld, #29; City Watch, #6))
“
Every morning I sit at the kitchen table over a tall glass of water swallowing pills. (So my hands won’t shake.) (So my heart won’t race.) (So my face won’t thaw.) (So my blood won’t mold.) (So the voices won’t scream.) (So I don’t reach for knives.) (So I keep out of the oven.) (So I eat every morsel.) (So the wine goes bitter.) (So I remember the laundry.) (So I remember to call.) (So I remember the name of each pill.) (So I remember the name of each sickness.) (So I keep my hands inside my hands.) (So the city won’t rattle.) (So I don’t weep on the bus.) (So I don’t wander the guardrail.) (So the flashbacks go quiet.) (So the insomnia sleeps.) (So I don’t jump at car horns.) (So I don’t jump at cat-calls.) (So I don’t jump a bridge.) (So I don’t twitch.) (So I don’t riot.) (So I don’t slit a strange man’s throat.)
”
”
Jeanann Verlee
“
She's a fighter, a riot girl, and she can't be any of that down here, so she runs between trains to feel something.
”
”
Casey McQuiston (One Last Stop)
“
Writing about race and crime was not new territory for me. But it can be treacherous. So here are my rules: No stereotypes. No generalizations. No explanations. No apologies. Just the facts, ma’am.
”
”
Colin Flaherty (White Girl Bleed a Lot: The Return of Race Riots to America)
“
Treating feminism like it's a personal accessory that just isn't appropriate anymore obscures the places where feminism hasn't made strides for people who still need it.
”
”
Andi Zeisler (We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement)
“
Note to reporters: The sanctimony thing probably works better on someone who has never broken real stories.
”
”
Colin Flaherty (White Girl Bleed a Lot: The Return of Race Riots to America)
“
I don't do the mob mind-reading trick, so I do not speak to motivation. But I do keep my eyes open and watch what happens. It is called reporting.
”
”
Colin Flaherty (White Girl Bleed a Lot: The Return of Race Riots to America)
“
Gran, for the gods' love, it's talk like yours that starts riots!" I said keeping my voice down. "Will you just put a stopper in it?"
She looked at me and sighed. "Girl, do you ever take a breath and wonder if folk don't put out bait for you? To see if you'll bite? You'll never get a man if you don't relax."
My dear old Gran. It's a wonder her children aren't every one of them as mad as priests, if she mangles their wits as she mangles mine.
"Granny, "I told her, "this is dead serious. I can't relax, no more than any Dog. I'm not shopping for a man. That's the last thing I need.
”
”
Tamora Pierce (Bloodhound (Beka Cooper, #2))
“
i want to scream because no matter how much I scream, no one will listen.
”
”
Sara Marcus (Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution)
“
Equality makes way for an increased number of free, considered choices, and an increased number of people with access to them. But choice itself isn't the same as equality...
”
”
Andi Zeisler (We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement)
“
Through tragedy, we were both stronger.
And through distance, our love was stronger.
She was mine.
I was hers.
Her, the girl, whose soul matched mine.
And I, the boy, who was made perfectly for her.
”
”
Tillie Cole (Riot (Scarred Souls, #4))
“
Ninety-nine out of a hundred conversations in the media about race go through the same kabuki: Ignore the victims. Humanize the thugs. When it is over, congratulate each other for superior moral sensitivity.
”
”
Colin Flaherty (White Girl Bleed a Lot: The Return of Race Riots to America)
“
My dad had once told me that the secret to a happy life was never to start something with a girl unless you were willing to follow wherever it leads.
”
”
Ben Aaronovitch (Midnight Riot (Rivers of London #1))
“
What she did was like the people stirring up the riots in Egypt and Libya," said my liberal brother John Flaherty. "Just say anything without even caring if it is true. That is how riots start.
”
”
Colin Flaherty (White Girl Bleed a Lot: The Return of Race Riots to America)
“
Something happened and I confirmed it. Or I did not write it. There is no seems. I did not say the attack was anti-white. I describe the attackers as a mob of black people as part of a pattern of such attacks.
”
”
Colin Flaherty (White Girl Bleed a Lot: The Return of Race Riots to America)
“
The diversity of voices, issues, approaches, and processes required to make feminism work as an inclusive social movement is precisely the kind of knotty, unruly insurrection that just can't be smoothed into a neat brand.
”
”
Andi Zeisler (We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement)
“
In general, though, women aren’t really allowed to be kick-ass. It’s like the famous distinction between art and craft: Art, and wildness, and pushing against the edges, is a male thing. Craft, and control, and polish, is for women. Culturally we don’t allow women to be as free as they would like, because that is frightening. We either shun those women or deem them crazy. Female singers who push too much, and too hard, don’t tend to last very long. They’re jags, bolts, comets: Janis Joplin, Billie Holiday. But being that woman who pushes the boundaries means you also bring in less desirable aspects of yourself. At the end of the day, women are expected to hold up the world, not annihilate it. That’s why Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill is so great. The term girl power was coined by the Riot Grrl movement that Kathleen spearheaded in the 1990s. Girl power: a phrase that would later be co-opted by the Spice Girls, a group put together by men, each Spice Girl branded with a different personality, polished and stylized to be made marketable as a faux female type. Coco was one of the few girls on the playground who had never heard of them, and that’s its own form of girl power, saying no to female marketing!
”
”
Kim Gordon
“
Steam coming off the planet, clouds of fleecy steam as boy and girl populations clash in religious riots, hot and whistling like a graveyard sodomist our little planet embraces its fragile yo-yo destiny, tuned in the secular mind like a dying engine. But some do not hear it this way, some flying successful moon-shot eyes do not see it this way. They do not hear the individual noises shhh,hiss, they hear the sound of the sounds together, they behold the interstices flashing up and down the cone of the flowering whirlwind.
”
”
Leonard Cohen (Beautiful Losers)
“
Excuses do not have to be true, or relevant.
”
”
Colin Flaherty (White Girl Bleed a Lot: The Return of Race Riots to America)
“
There had never been a funeral in our town before, at least not during our lifetimes. The majority of dying had happened during the Second World War when we didn't exist and our fathers were impossibly skinny young men in black-and-white photographs—dads on jungle airstrips, dads with pimples and tattoos, dads with pinups, dads who wrote love letters to the girls who would become our mothers, dads inspired by K rations, loneliness and glandular riot in malarial air into poetic reveries that ceased entirely once they got back home.
”
”
Jeffrey Eugenides (The Virgin Suicides)
“
Advertising and marketing philosophies that thrive on emphasizing 'natural' differences don't stay in the realm of advertising and marketing--they spill into how we justify sexism and racism at every life stage.
”
”
Andi Zeisler (We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement)
“
The rise of feminist underpants is a weird twist on Karl Marx's theory of commodity fetishism, wherein consumer products once divorced from inherent use value are imbued with all sorts of meaning. To brand something as feminist doesn't involve ideology, or labor, or policy, or specific actions or processes. It's just a matter of saying, 'This is feminist because we say it is.
”
”
Andi Zeisler (We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement)
“
The girls couldn't block out these things and they didn't want to; they wanted to stay acutely aware of the war against them so they could fight back.
”
”
Sara Marcus (Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution)
“
if we were to give the medical reports to you girls there would be a riot
”
”
Kate Moore (The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women)
“
The flip side of the rising tide of black mob violence is what the prison psychologist calls "infantile omnipotence." This is the feeling that because something has not happened to you directly, you can ignore it. Like an infant who thinks it is not vulnerable to any danger, because all it has ever known is the safety of the womb or the crib.
This is what accounts for widespread willingness to ignore the violence among members of the media and some members of the public.
”
”
Colin Flaherty (White Girl Bleed a Lot: The Return of Race Riots to America)
“
The Chicago Sun-Times is a national leader in two areas: 1) Denying that racial mob violence exists, and 2) Explaining why it does. When a mob of five hundred people stormed through downtown Chicago, beating and threatening and destroying property, do you know what the excuse was?
1) Warm weather
”
”
Colin Flaherty (White Girl Bleed a Lot: The Return of Race Riots to America)
“
If someone didn’t feel included, if someone felt marginalised, they would form their own band, write their own fanzine, or just call you out on what they deemed racist or classist, sizeist, sexist, body-ableist.
”
”
Carrie Brownstein (Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl)
“
Here is your law enforcement and media question of the day: Was the TV show COPS real or BS?
It might have been real incidents, but it wasn't really all that real. They edited the episodes to make it appear as if black people were committing fewer crimes. That is what the show creator John Langley said in a 2009 interview in response to people who were unhappy his long-running reality show, COPS, was showing too many black people getting arrested.
What irritates me sometimes is critics still watch and say, 'Oh look, they misrepresent people of color.' That's absolutely not true. To the contrary, I show more white people than statistically what the truth is in terms of street crime..It's just the reverse. And I do that intentionally, because I do not want to contribute to negative stereotypes, said Langley, the show's producer, in 2009.
”
”
Colin Flaherty (White Girl Bleed a Lot: The Return of Race Riots to America)
“
When the Department of Justice came in and found the school had a long history of black-on-Asian racial violence that school officials ignored, school officials admitted they might have had a problem. So they printed up some pamphlets and gave them to the Asian students, instructing them how to avoid antagonizing their black schoolmates with their racist behavior.
”
”
Colin Flaherty (White Girl Bleed a Lot: The Return of Race Riots to America)
“
Let's not forget Chicago. There have been tons of attacks on Chicago Transit Authority buses and trains. The head of the CTA said riders should be more aware of their surroundings. More blaming the victim. Maybe the riders need some pamphlets on how not to anger the rioters.
”
”
Colin Flaherty (White Girl Bleed a Lot: The Return of Race Riots to America)
“
...politically charged punk that combined activism and art. Forged out of a meeting of friends who decided they wanted to start a “girl riot,” the women gave rise to bands like Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney, addressing rape and violence in their songs, publishing zines, popularizing “girl power"...
”
”
Jess Bennett (Feminist Fight Club: An Office Survival Manual for a Sexist Workplace)
“
you, not riot grrrl, but rolling all of your R’s. less betty paige, more betty la fea. less zoey deschanel, more chilindrina. not trying to be more white—just more loved. just trying to find a song that is about the girl who is always fixing, snipping away at the bits of herself that are always becoming
”
”
Melissa Lozada-Oliva (peluda)
“
American culture, perhaps more than any other, prizes individualism. Our narratives of art, politics, and business idolize the person who triumphs against the odds, with only himself or herself to answer to. The lone wolf. The stranger in town. The maverick. The plucky kid. The Final Girl. You've only got yourself, in the end. It's all up to you.
”
”
Andi Zeisler (We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement)
“
A big tent is great and all, but there has to be a line in the sand, and I'm pretty sure the desire to legislate other women's bodies is it.
”
”
Andi Zeisler (We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement)
“
Tobi had summed it up in Jigsaw: “A band is any song you ever played with anybody even if only once.
”
”
Sara Marcus (Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution)
“
This girl has no idea the power she holds over me. She can't begin to imagine the lengths I will go to or the worlds I will burn down in my mission to make her happy.
”
”
Callie Hart (Riot House (Crooked Sinners, #1))
“
I have to think about that one for a minute. “Everybody’s pissed ’cause One-Fifteen hasn’t been charged,” I say, “but also because he’s not the first one to do something like this and get away with it. It’s been happening, and people will keep rioting until it changes. So I guess the system’s still giving hate, and everybody’s still getting fucked?”
Daddy laughs and gives me dap. “My girl. Watch your mouth, but yeah, that’s about right. And we won’t stop getting fucked till it changes. That’s the key. It’s gotta change.”
A lump forms in my throat as the truth hits me. Hard. “That’s why people are speaking out, huh? Because it won’t change if we don’t say something."
"Exactly. We can't be silent."
"So I can't be silent.
”
”
Angie Thomas (The Hate U Give (The Hate U Give, #1))
“
It’s been a year. There’s been footage on the TV of riots in faraway and unstable parts of the world, of women taking whole cities. Daniel’s right. The critical thing isn’t that fifteen-year-old girls can do it: you could contain that. The thing is that they can wake up this power in some of the older women. It raises questions. How long has this been possible? How did no one know until now?
”
”
Naomi Alderman (The Power)
“
I know what I said.” Swaggering strides brought him close. “I said the thought of seducing you would never cross my mind.” He swept aside her plaited hair and bent to whisper darkly in her ear. “I lied.” He retreated. She was rooted to the floor. “The thought had crossed my mind before I even made you that promise. And since then, so many thoughts have crossed my mind, my brain is the Charing Cross of filth. A riot of lewd fantasies. You’re naked in nearly all of them, and ever since a certain incident in the schoolroom, a fair number feature ropes.” Well, then. Alex needed a moment to recover from that. Perhaps two moments. Or a year.
”
”
Tessa Dare (The Governess Game (Girl Meets Duke, #2))
“
Empowertising not only builds on the idea that any choice is a feminist choice if a self-labeled feminist deems it so, but takes it a little bit further to suggest that being female is in itself something that deserves celebration.
”
”
Andi Zeisler (We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement)
“
Whatever you give light to will grow, Dash. Feed something and it’ll flourish. Care enough and the fragile thing in your hands will strengthen. I have faith that you’ll give me what you can until there’s more of it to give. That’s all.”
Jesus fucking Christ. I’m in way over my head here, and I have not been good enough in this life to have earned a second of this girl’s attention, but I’m going to take it, because an opportunity like this doesn’t come around twice.
”
”
Callie Hart (Riot Rules (Crooked Sinners, #2))
“
There is rioting in the suburbs; an openly racist party sits in Riksdagen, the parliament; intolerance is growing; fascism is on the rise and there are homeless people and beggars everywhere. In many ways Sweden has become a shameful nation.
”
”
David Lagercrantz (The Girl in the Spider's Web (Millennium, #4))
“
Empowerment wasn't defined as a static concept or standalone occurrence, but as an evolving way to rethink entire power structures and value systems, draw on shared skills and knowledge, and endow marginalized communities with tools for economic sustainability.
”
”
Andi Zeisler (We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement)
“
Anybody who listened to her talk or who read the zine she had begun publishing, Fantastic Fanzine, could easily become hypnotized by her words’ raw force: This world teaches women to hate themselves, but I refuse to listen to its message. I’m not going to let boys come between me and my girlfriends. I’m not going to try and be your idea of sexy if sexy means being thin and helpless, tottering around on high heeled shoes. I’m not going to stay home at night hating my sex because if I go out then I’m asking for trouble.
”
”
Sara Marcus (Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution)
“
I closed my eyes, flared my nostrils, and let the scents flood in. The strongest of them, caramel and brown sugar, smell as yellow-orange as the sun, came first. That one was easy. The one that anyone would notice coming into the shop. And then chocolate of course, the bitter dark and the sugary milk chocolate. I don’t think a normal girl would’ve smelled anything else, and part of me wanted to stop there. But I could feel Sam’s heart pounding behind me, and for once, I gave in.
Peppermint swirled into my nostrils, sharp as glass, then raspberry, almost too sweet, like too-ripe fruit. Apple, crisp and pure. Nuts, buttery, warm, earthy, like Sam. The subtle, mild scent of white chocolate. Oh, God, some sort of mocha, rich and dark and sinful. I sighed with pleasure, but there was more. The butter cookies on the shelves added a floury, comforting scent, and the lollipops, a riot of fruit scents too concentrated to be real. The salty bite of pretzels, the bright smell of lemon, the brittle edge of anise. Smells I didn’t even know names for. I groaned.
”
”
Maggie Stiefvater (Shiver (The Wolves of Mercy Falls, #1))
“
Marketplace feminism is in many ways about just branding feminism as an identify that everyone can and should consume. That's not a bad thing in theory, but in practice it tends to involve highlighting only the most appealing feature of a multifaceted set of movements. It kicks the least sensational and most complex issues under a rug and assures them that we'll get back to them once everybody's on board. And it ends up pandering to the people who might get on board-maybe, possibly, once feminism works its charm-rather than addressing the many unfinished projects still remaining.
”
”
Andi Zeisler (We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement)
“
Seeing her this worked up has something inside me pulling taut like a bowstring until I feel like I can’t breathe around the wretchedness of it. I’m such a fucking joke. Once upon a time, I thought I wanted to hurt this girl. It’s karma that it hurts me more than I can bear to see her in distress.
”
”
Callie Hart (Riot House (Crooked Sinners, #1))
“
Tiny rooms opened up onto the corridor, rooms that would have been like monastic cells if each of the girls hadn't made hers comfortable in her own way and according to her own taste. As she passed, Andie got glimpses of a riot of draped fabrics like a gypsy tent in one, a tapestry loom in another, painted murals of garden scenes in a third.
”
”
Mercedes Lackey (One Good Knight (Five Hundred Kingdoms, #2))
“
You must go ask Gi Bu Sen for advice. He is the only one who knows what sort of monster we face. These are his children, coming to torment us. He will recognize them. I'm having the new samples prepared. Between the three, he will know. "
"There's no other way?"
"Our only other choice is to begin quarantining the city, and then the riots will begin and there will be nothing left to save.
”
”
Paolo Bacigalupi (The Windup Girl)
“
It had to do with the way the mail wasn't delivered on time, and how potholes never got fixed, or the thievery at City Hall, or the race riots, or the 801 fires set around the city on Devil's night. The Lisbon girls became a symbol of what was wrong with the country, the pain it inflicted on even its most innocent citizens, and in order to make things better a parents' group donated a bench in the girls' memory to our school.
”
”
Jeffrey Eugenides (The Virgin Suicides)
“
The white man will come to destroy us again. His own history proves this. Just as he destroyed the so-called American Indian, just as he enslaved us, just as he exploited the Chinese, just as he drove the Mexicans out of Texas, surely he will come to this place. We must prepare ourselves or we will die. If you doubt what I say, just remember the riots in Tulsa. Just as the police didn’t save the people of Greenwood, the police won’t save us. We must save ourselves.
”
”
Keith Lee Johnson (Little Black Girl Lost: Book 1: The Innocent (The Little Black Girl Lost Series))
“
My God,” she says. “I feel like I’ve gone through a car wash.”
I laugh, or force myself to, because it’s not something I’d normally laugh at.
“What about you?” she says to Scottie. “How did you make out?”
“I’m a boy,” Scottie says. “Look at me.”
Sand has gotten into the bottom of her suit, creating a huge bulge. She scratches at the bulge. “I’m going to go to work now,” she says. I think she’s impersonating me and that Mrs. Speer is getting an unrealistic, humiliating glimpse.
“Scottie,” I say. “Take that out.”
“It must be fun to have girls,” Mrs. Speer says.
She looks at the ocean, and I see that she’s looking at Alex sunbathing on the floating raft. Sid leans over Alex and puts his mouth to hers. She raises a hand to his head, and for a moment I forget it’s my daughter out there and think of how long it has been since I’ve been kissed or kissed like that.
“Or maybe you have your hands full,” Mrs. Speer says.
“No, no,” I say. “It’s great,” and it is, I suppose, though I feel like I’ve just acquired them and don’t know yet. “They’ve been together for ages.” I gesture to Alex and Sid. I don’t understand if they’re a couple or if this is how all kids in high school act these days.
Mrs. Speer looks at me curiously, as if she’s about to say something, but she doesn’t.
“And boys.” I gesture to her little dorks. “They must keep you busy.”
“They’re a handful. But they’re at such a fun age. It’s such a joy.”
She gazes out at her boys. Her expression does little to convince me that they’re such a joy. I wonder how many times parents have these dull conversations with one another and how much they must hide. They’re so goddamn hyper, I’d do anything to inject them with a horse tranquilizer. They keep insisting that I watch what they can do, but I truly don’t give a fuck. How hard is it to jump off a diving board?
My girls are messed up, I want to say. One talks dirty to her own reflection. Did you do that when you were growing up?
“Your girls seem great, too,” she says. “How old are they?”
“Ten and eighteen. And yours?”
“Ten and twelve.”
“Oh,” I say. “Great.”
“Your younger one sure is funny,” she says. “I mean, not funny. I meant entertaining.”
“Oh, yeah. That’s Scottie. She’s a riot.
”
”
Kaui Hart Hemmings (The Descendants)
“
The occupants of the other three looked like the people they had seen rioting in the streets of Paris that morning. They were citizens of the other France, the France one didn’t read about in guidebooks. They were the put-upon and the left-behind, the ones without glittering degrees from elite institutions of learning. Globalization and automation had eroded their value in the workforce. The service economy was their only option. Their counterparts in Britain and America had already had their say at the ballot box. France, reckoned Gabriel, would be next.
”
”
Daniel Silva (The New Girl (Gabriel Allon, #19))
“
Then, in January 1961, a religious riot broke out in the central Indian city of Jabalpur. A Hindu girl had committed suicide; it was alleged that she took her life because she had been assaulted by two Muslim men. The claim was given lurid publicity by a local Jana Sangh newspaper, whereupon Hindu students went on a rampage through the town, attacking Muslim homes and burning shops. In retaliation a Muslim group torched a Hindu neighbourhood. The rioting continued for days, spreading also to the countryside. It was the most serious such incident since Partition, its main sufferers being poor Muslims, mostly weavers and bidi (cigarette) workers.52
”
”
Ramachandra Guha (India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy)
“
...the Iowa Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that its fair for a woman to be fired from her job if her appearance is distracting enough to threaten the marriage of her superior -- a decision spurred by the case of a dentist who fired his hygienist because even in head-to-foot scrubs, she was simply too irresistible. In the court's finding, this was totally legitimate: employers "can fire employees that they and their spouses see as threats to their marriages." It's not up to employers, you see, to be more professional and appropriate in such cases, it's up to female employees not to unwittingly lead them on by doing nothing other than having the gall to show up for work with their god-given faces and bodies.
”
”
Andi Zeisler (We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement)
“
Have you ever asked yourself what kind of story the story of your life is? I always thought mine would be a coming-of-age story. A small-town girl making it in the big city, like Melanie Griffith in Working Girl or Dolly Parton in 9 to 5. Sure, I’d struggle for everything I achieved, but in the end my plucky can-do attitude would ensure I’d triumph over whatever obstacles stood in my way. Like Legally Blonde or Pretty Woman or Pride and Prejudice, the story of my life would be an uplifting comedy, in turns fun and moving and aspirational. I’d be strong and spirited and a riot to be around. I’d be beautiful and smart and kids would love me. That’s what I thought. But now—looking down at the gun in my hands, feeling the heft of it, its cold reality in my palm—I’m not so sure I got the genre right. In fact I’m not even sure I’m the main character anymore.
”
”
Catherine Steadman (The Disappearing Act)
“
We're not in Khlong Prem Prison yet. So let's assume we're winning."
But inwardly, Anderson wonders. There are too many variables in play, and it makes him nervous. He remembers a time in Missouri when the Grahamites rioted. There had been tension, some small speeches, and then it had simply erupted in field burning. No one had seen the violence coming. Not a single intelligence officer had anticipated the cauldron boiling beneath the surface.
Anderson had ended up perched atop a grain silo, choking on the smoke of HiGro fields going up in sheets of flame, firing steadily at rioters on the ground with a spring rifle he'd salvaged from a slow-moving security guard, and all the while he had wondered how everyone had missed the signs. They lost the facility because of that blindness. And now it is the same. A sudden eruption, and the surprise of realizing that the world he understands is not the one he actually inhabits.
”
”
Paolo Bacigalupi (The Windup Girl)
“
Who in the Hell is Tom Jones?"
I was shacked with a
24 year old girl from
New York City for
two weeks- about
the time of the garbage
strike out there, and
one night my 34 year
old woman arrived and
she said, "I want to see
my rival." she did
and then she said, "o,
you're a cute little thing!"
next I knew there was a
screech of wildcats-
such screaming and scratch-
ing, wounded animal moans,
blood and piss. . .
I was drunk and in my
shorts. I tried to
seperate them and fell,
wrenched my knee. then
they were through the screen
door and down the walk
and out into the street.
squadcars full of cops
arrived. a police heli-
coptor circled overhead.
I stood in the bathroom
and grinned in the mirror.
it's not often at the age
of 55 that such splendid
things occur.
better than the Watts
riots.
the 34 year old
came back in. she had
pissed all over her-
self and her clothing
was torn and she was
followed by 2 cops who
wanted to know why.
pulling up my shorts
I tried to explain.
Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye: A Novel. (Ecco; Reprint edition July 29, 2014) Originally published 1982.
”
”
Charles Bukowski (Ham on Rye)
“
I got your flowers. They’re beautiful, thank you.” A gorgeous riot of Gerber daisies and lilies in a rainbow of reds, pinks, yellows and oranges.
“Welcome. Bet Duncan loved sending one of his guys out to pick them up for me.”
She could hear the smile in his voice, imagined the devilish twinkle in his eyes. “Oh, he did. Said it’s probably the first time in the history of WITSEC that a U.S. Marshal delivered flowers to one of their witnesses.”
A low chuckle. “Well, this was a special circumstance, so they helped me out.”
“I loved the card you sent with them the best though.” Proud of you. Give ‘em hell tomorrow. He’d signed it Nathan rather than Nate, which had made her smile. “I had no idea you were romantic,” she continued. “All these interesting things I’m learning about you.” She hadn’t been able to wipe the silly smile off her face after one of the security team members had knocked on her door and handed them to her with a goofy smile and a, “special delivery”.
“Baby, you haven’t seen anything yet. When the trial’s done you’re gonna get all the romance you can handle, and then some.”
“Really?” Now that was something for a girl to look forward to, and it sure as hell did the trick in taking her mind off her worries. “Well I’m all intrigued, because it’s been forever since I was romanced. What do you have in mind? Candlelit dinners? Going to the movies? Long walks? Lazy afternoon picnics?”
“Not gonna give away my hand this early on, but I’ll take those into consideration.”
“And what’s the key to your heart, by the way? I mean, other than the thing I did to you this morning.”
“What thing is that? Refresh my memory,” he said, a teasing note in his voice.
She smiled, enjoying the light banter. It felt good to let her worry about tomorrow go and focus on what she had to look forward to when this was all done. Being with him again, seeing her family, getting back to her life. A life that would hopefully include Nathan in a romantic capacity. “Waking you up with my mouth.”
He gave a low groan. “I loved every second of it. But think simpler.”
Simpler than sex? For a guy like him? “Food, then. I bet you’re a sucker for a home-cooked meal. Am I right?” He chuckled.
“That works too, but it’s still not the key.”
“Then what?”
“You.”
She blinked, her heart squeezing at the conviction behind his answer. “Me?”
“Yeah, just you. And maybe bacon,” he added, a smile in his voice. He was so freaking adorable.
“So you’re saying if I made and served you a BLT, you’d be putty in my hands?” Seemed hard to imagine, but okay.
A masculine rumble filled her ears. “God, yeah.”
She couldn’t help the sappy smile that spread across her face. “Wow, you are easy. And I can definitely arrange that.”
“I can hardly wait. Will you serve it to me naked? Or maybe wearing just a frilly little apron and heels?”
She smothered a laugh, but a clear image of her doing just that popped into her head, serving him the sandwich in that sexy outfit while watching his eyes go all heated. “Depends on how good you are.”
“Oh, baby, I’ll be so good to you, you have no idea.
”
”
Kaylea Cross (Avenged (Hostage Rescue Team, #5))
“
The Reign of Terror: A Story of Crime and Punishment told of two brothers, a career criminal and a small-time crook, in prison together and in love with the same girl. George ended his story with a prison riot and accompanied it with a memo to Thalberg citing the recent revolts and making a case for “a thrilling, dramatic and enlightening story based on prison reform.”
---
Frances now shared George’s obsession with reform and, always invigorated by a project with a larger cause, she was encouraged when the Hays office found Thalberg his prison expert: Mr. P. W. Garrett, the general secretary of the National Society of Penal Information. Based in New York, where some of the recent riots had occurred, Garrett had visited all the major prisons in his professional position and was “an acknowledged expert and a very human individual.” He agreed to come to California to work with Frances for several weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas for a total of kr 4,470.62 plus expenses. Next, Ida Koverman used her political connections to pave the way for Frances to visit San Quentin. Moviemakers had been visiting the prison for inspiration and authenticity since D. W. Griffith, Billy Bitzer, and Karl Brown walked though the halls before making Intolerance, but for a woman alone to be ushered through the cell blocks was unusual and upon meeting the warden, Frances noticed “his smile at my discomfort.” Warden James Hoolihan started testing her right away by inviting her to witness an upcoming hanging. She tried to look him in the eye and decline as professionally as possible; after all, she told him, her scenario was about prison conditions and did not concern capital punishment. Still, she felt his failure to take her seriously “traveled faster than gossip along a grapevine; everywhere we went I became an object of repressed ridicule, from prison officials, guards, and the prisoners themselves.” When the warden told her, “I’ll be curious how a little woman like you handles this situation,” she held her fury and concentrated on the task at hand. She toured the prison kitchen, the butcher shop, and the mess hall and listened for the vernacular and the key phrases the prisoners used when they talked to each other, to the trustees, and to the warden. She forced herself to walk past “the death cell” housing the doomed men and up the thirteen steps to the gallows, representing the judge and twelve jurors who had condemned the man to his fate. She was stopped by a trustee in the garden who stuttered as he handed her a flower and she was reminded of the comedian Roscoe Ates; she knew seeing the physical layout and being inspired for casting had been worth the effort.
---
Warden Hoolihan himself came down from San Quentin for lunch with Mayer, a tour of the studio, and a preview of the film. Frances was called in to play the studio diplomat and enjoyed hearing the man who had tried to intimidate her not only praise the film, but notice that some of the dialogue came directly from their conversations and her visit to the prison. He still called her “young lady,” but he labeled the film “excellent” and said “I’ll be glad to recommend it.”
----
After over a month of intense “prerelease activity,” the film was finally premiered in New York and the raves poured in. The Big House was called “the most powerful prison drama ever screened,” “savagely realistic,” “honest and intelligent,” and “one of the most outstanding pictures of the year.
”
”
Cari Beauchamp (Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood)
“
Those Apocalypse Brigadiers got all riled up after we electrocuted that girl in town square,” Ezekiel said. “Rioting, blowing up the street, demanding her corpse so they can desecrate it. It’s great. Come down here.
”
”
Autumn Christian (The Crooked God Machine)
“
A riot of transparent blue flowers grew up the side of a tree, reaching its highest branches and sending tendrils of milky blue to nearby trees. A net made of tiny lilac-hued blossoms crawled over the moss, snaking into the patterns of the bark. And overhanging the path, where two branches came close to touching each other, a canopy that looked as though it must have been made of downy feathers, if feathers could be diluted into something like a cloud. It was eerily strange, yet so beautiful.
"Who made this?" she murmured, tracing a blossom of syrup gold suspended by a streamer from something not unlike a willow tree. "Did you?"
"No one made it," the girl answered. "It is just--- this place. It takes what is given from your world and uses it."
"The whole world---the world does this magic?"
"What is magic?" The girl lifted her finger and beckoned Delphine. She pulled a thread from the red broadcloth. "Where did this come from?"
"It's wool, the fibers from a sheep. It's cut off, and spun, and woven, and---"
"Sheep. Where did 'sheep' come from?"
Delphine paused. "I--- I suppose from some wild animal, domesticated many years ago."
"Ah. A wild animal. A creature, begot from--- what? Its dam and sire?" She shook her head. "Now that is magic. And your plants--- they sprout, from seeds in the ground? That, too, is magic." She tested the thread between her fingers, rolling it--- no, Delphine saw with wonder, stretching it. It became thin under her fingers, flat like a ribbon, and lengthened, the color washing from scarlet to pink to palest apple blossom as the single thread became two yards long and the girl wrapped it around the crown of her head, binding her wheat-sheaf hair.
"And that is what we call magic.
”
”
Rowenna Miller (The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill)
“
Hang on,” Darcy spoke over me and my fingers itched with the urge to punish her for that. If she’d done so in my classroom, I would have made her pay severely for it. As it was, I supposed I could be lenient this once. She’d soon learn I was not to be fucked with anyway. Of course, then my treacherous mind ran to the dangerous place where my punishments involved me pushing her down on my desk and spanking her ass raw, and I cursed myself internally.
What the fuck’s the matter with me?
...
“Yes. But not just any school. The best school.” It really was the fucking best. “So what do you say?”
“I say you're crazy,” Darcy said and I had a vision of showing her just how crazy I could be. Not an appropriate one though. The kind where she was pinned beneath me gasping my name.
Focus.
...
A beat later, Darcy returned from the bathroom in tight jeans which clung to her round ass and a black tank top that hugged the hourglass curves of her body. Ah, great. Why couldn’t she have been covered in Heptian Toad skin?
For some reason, her twin of the exact same figure hadn’t stirred anything in me, but this one had my cock throbbing and my mind spinning with filthy fantasies I could never, ever act on. You fucking idiot.
...
I grabbed her shoulders, jerking her around to face the circle of new students in The Howling Meadow ready for their Awakening as my heart thrashed and rioted in my chest.
Darcy stepped away from me and my fingers balled and unballed as I stared after her, a growl rolling low through my throat as I worked to fight against the thirst, and the other, hungry part of me which had awoken.
Darcy glanced back at me in alarm. “What's going on?” she asked, her green eyes dancing with panic. I guessed this really was a mindfuck.
“Did you just drug us?” Tory rounded on me.
“What is it with you and drugs?” I muttered. “Remember to keep calm,” I commanded, needing them to get through this without making a complete scene.
I had to know what Elements they possessed. Lionel would be waiting for me to call and give him a play by play of everything that had happened tonight, everything I’d learned about the Vegas. But there was one thing for sure I wouldn’t tell even Darius about this night. That I felt a pull to one of them that defied all logic and made my hatred for them deepen. Because of all the concerns I’d had about the Vega twins returning to Solaria, none of my imaginings had conjured up this.
Maybe it was the power of their blood that called to me, but as it was only Darcy who had made me fucking burn with unwanted need, I doubted I could put it down to that. One thing was for sure, I’d be cutting these twisted urges out of me just as soon as I could. And they were not going to affect anything about what came next. Because the Vega twins would not be ascending to the throne. It was my duty to make sure of that. And no girl with blue-tipped hair in bunny pyjamas was going to fuck with my plans.(Lance Orion POV)
”
”
Caroline Peckham (The Awakening as Told by the Boys (Zodiac Academy, #1.5))
“
And that’s another reason I detest Mogshack, by the way. I never knew him to try and wean a patient away from dependence on guns. Yet he has two, three thousand a year of the population of New York State through his hands. By this time, if he’d done his job properly, he’d have created a glut of second-hand weaponry and cooled the temperature in this city past the flashpoint.”
“Two or three thousand out of how many many million?” Flamen snapped.
“Out of how many who are unstable enough to lose their marbles and start shooting at random into the street?” Conroy countered. “You don’t start riots, I don’t start riots, the politically educated leaders of the X Patriots don’t start riots. Paranoids start riots and other people are tipped over the edge by contagious hysteria. Your typical insurrectionary sniper isn’t a revolutionary or a fanatic—he’s someone who’s so devoid of empathy he can treat the human beings below his window as moving targets conveniently offered for his skill. And by clever exploitation of the public’s insecurity the Gottschalks have managed to put over a gang of lies equating gunmanship with masculine potency, which do even more damage than Mogshack’s pernicious dogmas. Damn it, man: anyone who can treat another human being as an object for target practice is stuck even further back in the infantile stage than somebody who’s frightened to move on from the masturbation phase and go to bed with a girl! Do you own a gun?
”
”
John Brunner (The Jagged Orbit)
“
Queen Mary had made a decision. Agonizing though it had been for her, she now realized that while Jane lived, she could potentially form a focal point for future dissenters. She had done all that she could in order to preserve the life of the young girl, but she could do no more. Evan after Wyatt's treachery had been discovered, 'the Queen was already considering to have her reprieved, but, judging that such an action might give rise to new riots, the Council ruled it out and sentenced her to death'. Moreover, '[Simon Renard, Imperial ambassador] in the closet, and [Stephen Gardiner, Lord Chancellor] in the pulpit, alike told her that she must show no mercy.' Thanks to the actions of her father, the death sentence handed to Jane at Guildhall would have to become a reality.
”
”
Nicola Tallis (Crown of Blood: The Deadly Inheritance of Lady Jane Grey)
“
Up ahead, people are shouting about white shirts and the death of their Queen's protector. Angry voices, ready for a riot. The storm is brewing. The battle pieces are being aligned. A little girl hurries past, pressing whisper sheets into each of their hands before dashing on. The political parties are already at work. Soon the godfather of the slum will have his own people down in the alleys inciting violence.
”
”
Paolo Bacigalupi (The Windup Girl)
“
But, and here's the thing, a vampire is like a cross between a human and a bedbug. I have to ask myself—what in the world could be sexy about that?
”
”
Jill Nojack (Riot Girls)
“
I will tell you on the way. Take off this outer dress. We must leave now. No questions asked.” She obeyed and pulled it off. Her tunic underneath was better suited for running. His eyes found it quite agreeable. She did trust him, with all her heart and soul. She let him lead her out of the building toward the courtyard. He told her about the riots and the giants and the hostages as they ran. It was all horrific, but she was a tough girl. Methuselah realized she was the kind of person you wanted on your side when all Sheol broke loose. She would not scream in fear and shake like a brittle titmouse. She would want to join the fray. “You need to tell me where your parents live. My mother went to get them, to bring them with us. But now they are all three caught up in the middle of it.
”
”
Brian Godawa (Enoch Primordial (Chronicles of the Nephilim #2))
“
Maybe being a teenager was always going to be a bloodbath to some extent, but it did not have to be this particular bloodbath. Its severity and the specific tone of its miseries were political, which meant they were mutable. I felt powerless not because I was weak but because I lived in a society that drained girls of power. Boys harassed me not because I invited it but because they were taught it was acceptable and saw that no one intervened. These things weren’t my fault, and we could fight them all together. For the first time in years, I knew that I was going to be okay.
”
”
Sara Marcus (Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution)
“
The pair’s status as paradigmatic riot grrrls was only increasing, especially as their extremist rhetoric polarized longtime allies and drove many away. Politics was personal; their revolution had become about a purification of one’s individual life, habits, language, relationships. This is the revolutionary program of a moment that has lost the ability to envision large-scale change, or that sees institutions as so flawed at their core that they can never be vehicles of transformation.
”
”
Sara Marcus (Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution)
“
Yay, another puppy! Can I come see it?” he exclaimed. “Yes. But focus, Jessie. Do you have the trainer’s number?” “Yeah, it’s in my phone, which is upstairs. I’ll call Marie as soon as we hang up and see if she can do an emergency consultation. She’s so great, she’s like that dog whisperer guy on TV. Only, she’s a girl. And blonde. Oh, and southern. She says things like, ‘fuck me runnin’ with a stick.’ It’s a riot!
”
”
Alexa Land (Belonging (Firsts and Forever #8))
“
In a time of feminism taken into account, there's a sense that if one's choices--even in something as minor as a favorite chill-out show--can't be rationalized, they should probably be kept quiet. As with most-feminist movies and most-feminist underpants, this suggests that feminism is a unvarying foundation of a larger system. It suggests feminism is something that either is or is not okay to consume, rather than a sense through which creators and audiences see stories, characters, and communication.
”
”
Andi Zeisler (We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement)
“
Xoe: or Vampires, and Werewolves, and Demons, oh my!
”
”
Jill Nojack (Riot Girls)
“
Magic Unbound: Book One in the Fae Unbound Series -
”
”
Jill Nojack (Riot Girls)
“
A great thing about Olympia is that everybody will clap for anything,” songwriter Lois Maffeo, who had a long-running all-girl radio show on the community radio station KAOS, said later. “You could get up and sing some godawful song and everybody would be like, ‘Yeah! Good for you, that’s so excellent!
”
”
Sara Marcus (Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution)
“
Another artist, Nikki McClure, used to take long walks in the woods around sunset, making up songs and singing them to herself at the top of her voice; when she hit on something that sounded good to her, she’d run back to whatever house was hosting a show and sing into the mic, knowing the audience would be receptive.
”
”
Sara Marcus (Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution)
“
Fuck you. I’m not a child.”
… “No,” he says. “You’re not. So grow up.”
“Oh, is it time for my maturity lesson from a man who can’t go one day without throwing a tantrum in the office?”
“You are such a fucking brat.”
“Suck my dick.”
He flinches and stand upright. Then a smirk creeps across his lips.
“Excuse me? Did you tell me to suck your dick?”
A snort escapes me, and I slap my hand over my mouth.
“Jesus Christ.” He shakes his head, laughing. “This girl just told me to suck her dick. I have nothing to say to that. I’m honestly impressed.
”
”
Tyler King (Riot Street)
“
I want you in my bed, Riot Girl. Every fucking day. I want to wake up to you and touch you and I want to carve my fucking name into your soul. I want to be the man you turn to for help." My breath escapes me in a rush at that proclamation. "Now, please … tell me who I have to kill to get you to come back to me.
”
”
Lucy Smoke (Wicked Dark Heathens (Sick Boys, #4))
“
Being one of the guys meant I could not go on being the woman I’d become expert at being among men. It was a version of myself I’d first tasted way back when I was a child of eleven and I’d felt that prickly rush of power when grown men would turn their heads to look at me or whistle or say Hey pretty baby just loudly enough that I could hear. The one I’d banked on all through high school, starving myself thin, playing cute and dumb so I’d be popular and loved. The one I’d fostered all through my young adult years while trying on different costumes—earth girl, punk girl, cowgirl, riot girl, ballsy girl. The one for whom behind every hot pair of boots or sexy little skirt or flourish of the hair there was a trapdoor that led to the least true version of me. Now there was only one version. On the PCT I had no choice but to inhabit it entirely, to show my grubby face to the whole wide world.O
”
”
Cheryl Strayed (Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail)
“
I followed along with Sky News and BBC News during the UK 2024 riots. The BBC News feed distinctly changed after it emerged the killer of the young girls was a BBC TV star. The Sky news feed distinctly changed after the rioting did not stop. After a week of watching both of them, I never trusted either news feed and started to get my news from social media. Both channels reported the Banksy police box artwork as ‘fish’ when they were flesh eating piranhas!
”
”
Steven Magee
“
I felt powerless not because I was weak but because I lived in a society that drained girls of power. Boys harassed me not because I invited it but because they were taught it was acceptable and saw that no one intervened. These things weren’t my fault, and we could fight them all together.
”
”
Sara Marcus (Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution)
“
the consciousness that many of our emotional challenges (self-doubt, confusion, sadness) resulted not from personal failings but from political and social forces, and that we could do battle with them as such; the belief that we could and would, as one of the movement’s manifestos had put it, change the world for real.
”
”
Sara Marcus (Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution)
“
Eventually you have to decide what to do with this desire. Do you tamp it down in yourself, or do you chase after it? Should you quit your job to pursue your dream, or hang on to that steady paycheck? Stay in an okay relationship or find a better match? Do you plunge into a Technicolor riot of what might be, harsh and delirious and confusing? Or do you accept the humble beauty of ordinary life, where nothing ever changes, and everything is simple? Which will it be—Kansas or Oz? Life as it is or life as it could be?
Soon enough, life will offer you an answer. But for the moment, you are like Dorothy, sitting up in her bed, trying to decide which pair of slippers she wants to wear today. Black or ruby? Black or ruby? Until she decides, she’ll be caught in a maddening state of tension, trying to live in two worlds at once—padding around the farmhouse as it spins inside the twister, with rubies shining in her bloodstream, her auburn hair slowly turning gray.
Spare a thought for poor Dorothy, the orphan girl of Kansas, who dreams in color but lives in black and white.
”
”
John Koenig
“
In the midst of the riot, I noticed a young, blond American couple wearing Bermuda shorts and golf shirts, and holding hands, immobilized by the fights raging around them. The referee, a quiet little fellow called Hammer, was also fighting for his life, blindly swinging a steel chair, deflecting unidentified flying objects and attacking fans. He was backing his way toward the two Americans. My first instinct was to intervene, but they were more than thirty feet away, and I would never have made it. Hammer swung full force as he turned, smashing his chair over the blond man’s head. The man fell to the floor, his girl beside him, helpless and terrified. Now I understood why Bruce had stayed home. Back in the hotel room, Smith was sick too, and we took turns racing to the toilet and sweating on our grungy beds. My shoulder was killing me, and I couldn’t raise my arm. Tiny gnats landed on us incessantly; they seemed harmless enough, so we just rubbed them out. The street sounds filtered up, sirens wailed, and it turned out the little gnats weren’t so harmless after all: For weeks we were covered in festering boils. Smith and I took turns with a pair of tweezers plucking at the eruptions on our arms and chests, leaving big pink craters.
”
”
Bret Hart (Hitman: My Real Life in the Cartoon World of Wrestling)
“
Who is this lady you’ve become? You are a potbellied riot girl! Why are you plugging your caloric intake into your smartphone!?
”
”
Lena Dunham (Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned")
“
But I felt constrained using the voice of an adolescent girl who didn’t know enough because I didn’t know enough. I was too young then. It was a crisis that swirled around me, rather than cut through me, and yet the riots have weighed on my conscience as a crucible of race relations that this nation failed.
”
”
Cathy Park Hong (Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning)
“
I’ve always been interested in playing music with other women,” Tobi wrote in her article. “And it seems like I’ve always been misunderstood and gotten called sexist for it. I don’t know, maybe I’m crazy, but to me it seems natural to notice the difference between men and women and I don’t understand WHY I’m constantly told to ignore that in the context of rock and roll.
”
”
Sara Marcus (Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution)
“
Safety had been a key concept in feminist circles since the ‘70s. All-female events or groups were commonly described as “safe spaces”—insulated from any hint of male violence. Safe could be a slippery word, though, sometimes used to mean less “free of danger” than “comfortable” or “unchallenged”—with the added intimation that anyone who dared to disagree was not just a dissenter but an attacker. Anything that wasn’t to one’s liking, if it could be framed as a political issue, could be described as a threat to one’s safety, and Mary was learning how useful this could be. “I saw how power was gained by talking about being a victim,” she said.
”
”
Sara Marcus (Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution)
“
I’ve loved conditioning myself ever since I was a kid. Exposing myself to some kind of stimulus and then training myself to expect a certain outcome. I love nothing more than mastering myself, both mind and body, and my first thought when I saw that girl’s smiling face, was that I wanted to make myself hate her. Why, you ask? Why the hell not? Just for the fun of it. For a way to pass the time.
”
”
Callie Hart (Riot House (Crooked Sinners, #1))
“
The truth,” said Ellis. “Is that you’re perfect.”
He let that land, let West hear that he was perfect, and then emphasized.
“Literally perfect.”
West’s throat ached — and not just from being gagged. Emotion ran riot in his chest. Too much.
“It was so hard,” continued Ellis, caressing the inside of West’s throat. “To find something to ‘fix’ about you — about your body, about your bone-deep desire to please. I had to work for those moments, push you so hard to get resistance, because you were such a good girl. From the beginning.
”
”
Daniel May (Princess)
“
MAYBE I WOULDN’T HAVE TO BE A FEMINIST IF YOU WEREN’T SUCH AN ASSHOLE.
”
”
Sara Marcus (Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution)
“
I felt powerless not because I was weak but because I lived in a society that drained girls of power.
”
”
Sara Marcus (Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution)
“
Skunk water was invented by an Israeli company called Ordotec, which hails itself as a “green” company and calls its product “100% safe for people, animals and plants” in addition to being “the most effective, cost-efficient and safest riot control solution available.
”
”
Ahed Tamimi (They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom)
“
...while riot grrrl is part of the punk rock/alternative rock feminism of the 1990s, it's by no means the majority of it. Despite the slogan, not every girl was a riot grrrl, and there's a huge swath of awesome women in '90s music who aren't riot grrrls. In no particular order: L7, Hole, PJ Harvey, Belly, Throwing Muses, Seven Year Bitch, Babes in Toyland, Liz Phair, Bjork, Juliana Hatfield, Gwen Stefani/No Doubt, Shirley Manson/Garbage, the Breeders, Luscious Jackson, Elastica, Sleater-Kinney, and may more women were part of either the alternative or indie rock music scene. Beyond that, the decade was pretty amazing for singer-songwriters like Tori Amos, Sarah McLachlan, Jewel, Fiona Apple, Alanis Morissette, Tracy Chapman, and Melissa Etheridge; for the R&B and hip-hop artists like Salt-n-Peppa, Queen Latifah, TLC, En Vogue, and Missy Elliott; and, at the tail end of the decade, all the pop you could ever want with the Spice Girls, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and Destiny's Child.
So, if you read this book, then run to Spotify to listen to riot grrrl bands, and find they're not for you, remember: there's more than one way to be a girl, and there's more than one kind of music to power you to your goals. What you listen to will never be as important as what you do.
”
”
Elizabeth Keenan (Rebel Girls)
“
Lucy picked up the point. “I remember this one time when I was in the third grade? And Jesse Cantu decided that he liked me? But I didn’t like him? So he decided that I would fall in love with him if he rescued me from some kind of danger, because that’s what always happens in the movies? So one day he told me that there was a surprise waiting for me in the cupboard at the back of the classroom and all I had to do was go in at recess and open the cupboard door—”
“And you believed him?” Benno interrupted, aghast.
“Of course!” Lucy said indignantly. “Because I’m from Mississippi! Where we believe people! So anyway, when I opened the cupboard there was a whole mess of spiders in there and I know people say that spiders scuttle away when they see you coming, but these spiders jumped out at me like they were rabid or something and Jesse ran into the room to save me but I was screaming so much that the principal called 911!” She paused for breath. “And the only good thing that happened was that we all got out of school for the rest of the day.”
There was a brief silence as everyone absorbed this. Finally Silvia muttered, “Men are pigs.”
Giacomo sighed. “How old was this boy with the spiders?” he asked Lucy in a patient voice, as if they had all gone off the rails but were fortunate that he was there to put them right.
She frowned, as if suspecting a trick, but finally answered, “Eight.”
“As I thought! Far too young to realize what a mistake he was making,” he said triumphantly. “But I’m sure he learned from this sad experience, yes? He didn’t keep trying to attract women with spiders?”
“Well, no, of course not,” Lucy said. “Jesse’s still real immature, but he’s not an idiot.”
“There you are, then.” Giacomo leaned his chair back, teetering on the back two legs, looking pleased with himself. “Everyone makes mistakes in love. The point is to learn from them. For example, Jesse learned—”
“What?” Kate scoffed. “That attacking a girl with spiders isn’t a good way to say ‘I love you’? That should have been obvious from the start.”
“Well, yes.” He nodded, as if conceding the point, but then added. “Of course, all knowledge is useful.”
“But not all knowledge is worth the cost.”
“And what cost is that?” Giacomo’s deep brown eyes were alight with enjoyment.
“Looking like a fool.”
“Oh, that.” He folded his arms across his chest with the air of one who is about to win an argument. “That’s nothing to concern yourself with. After all, love makes fools of everyone, don’t you agree?”
“No, I don’t.” Kate bit off each word. “I don’t agree at all.”
“How astonishing,” he muttered.
“In fact,” she said meaningfully, “I would say that love only makes fools of those who were fools to begin with.”
She smiled at him, clearly pleased with her riposte. Giacomo let his chair fall back to the floor with a thump.
“If the world was left to people like you,” he said in an accusing tone, “we’d all be computing love’s logic on computers and dissecting our hearts in a biology lab.”
“If the world were left to people like me,” Kate said with conviction, “it would be a much better place to live.”
“Oh, yes,” he said sarcastically. “Because it would be orderly. Sensible. And dull.”
“Love doesn’t have to end in riots and disaster and, and, and . . . spider attacks!” she said hotly.
”
”
Suzanne Harper (The Juliet Club)
“
Everyone thinks the riots are only about Rodney, but they’re not. Jo was right about that. They’re also about Latasha Harlins. Latasha was a black girl my age in Los Angeles. Latasha was black. Latasha was a girl. Latasha was my age. She went into a liquor store to buy orange juice, and the Korean woman at the counter thought she was stealing. She wasn’t. They got into a fight, and as Latasha tried to walk away, the woman at the counter shot her in the back of the head.
”
”
Christina Hammonds Reed (The Black Kids)
“
Looting is a natural response to the unnatural and inhuman society of commodity abundance. It instantly undermines the commodity as such, and it also exposes what the commodity ultimately implies: the army, the police and the other specialized detachments of the state's monopoly of armed violence. What is a policeman? He is the active servant of the commodity, the man in complete submission to the commodity, whose job it is to ensure that a given product of human labor remains a commodity, with the magical property of having to be paid for, instead of becoming a mere refrigerator or rifle — a passive, inanimate object, subject to anyone who comes along to make use of it. In rejecting the humiliation of being subject to police, the blacks are at the same time rejecting the humiliation of being subject to commodities.
The Watts youth, having no future in market terms, grasped another quality of the present, and that quality was so incontestable and irresistible that it drew in the whole population — women, children, and even sociologists who happened to be on the scene. Bobbi Hollon, a young black sociologist of the neighborhood, had this to say to the Herald Tribune in October: 'Before, people were ashamed to say they came from Watts. They'd mumble it. Now they say it with pride. Boys who used to go around with their shirts open to the waist, and who'd have cut you to pieces in half a second, showed up here every morning at seven o'clock to organize the distribution of food. Of course, it's no use pretending that food wasn't looted.... All that Christian blah has been used too long against blacks. These people could loot for ten years and they wouldn't get back half the money those stores have stolen from them over all these years.... Me, I'm only a little black girl.' Bobbi Hollon, who has sworn never to wash off the blood that splashed on her sandals during the rioting, adds: 'Now the whole world is watching Watts.
”
”
Deepak Narang Sawhney (Unmasking L.A.: Third Worlds and the City)