Kiley Reid

Library withdrawal copy. I’ve removed the plastic cover. Some library stamps and yellowing of pages. 

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Oregon

A Good Morning America Book Club Pick An Indie Next Pick A LibraryReads Pick From the celebrated New York Times bestselling author of Such a Fun Age comes a fresh and provocative story about a residential assistant and her messy entanglement with a professor and three unruly students. It's 2017 at the University of Arkansas. Millie Cousins, a senior resident assistant, wants to graduate, get a job, and buy a house. So when Agatha Paul, a visiting professor and writer, offers Millie an easy yet unusual opportunity, she jumps at the chance. But Millie's starry-eyed hustle becomes jeopardized by odd new friends, vengeful dorm pranks, and illicit intrigue. A fresh and intimate portrait of desire, consumption, and reckless abandon, Come and Get It is a tension-filled story about money, indiscretion, and bad behavior—and the highly anticipated new novel by acclaimed and award-winning author Kiley Reid.

Come and Get It

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Gabriel Smith

A Novel

From a provocative new literary talent, a hilarious and haunted novel featuring an unlikable protagonist grappling with grief, inheritance, and the ghosts of his past We meet our ill-tempered protagonist—the story’s titular “brat”—at a low moment, but not yet at rock bottom. The Gabriel of the novel is mourning the death of his father as well as a recent breakup and struggling to finish writing his second book. Alone and aimless, he agrees to move back into his parents’ house to clear it out for sale. Here, the clichés end. Gabriel has trouble delivering on his promises: as the moldy, overgrown house deteriorates around him, so does his own health, and large sheets of his skin begin to peel from his body at a terrifying rate. In fragments and figments, Gabriel takes us on a surreal journey into the mysteries of the family home, where he finds unfinished manuscripts written by his parents that seem to mutate every time he picks them up and a bizarre home video that hints at long-buried secrets. Strange people and figures emerge—perhaps directly from the novel’s embedded fictions—and despite his compromised state (and his more successful brother’s growing frustration) Gabriel is determined to try to make sense of these hauntings. Part ghost story, part grief story, flirting with the autofictional mode while sitting squarely in the tradition of the gothic, Brat crackles with deadpan humor and delightfully taut prose. Gabriel Smith’s arrival heralds the next generation of fiction writers—formally inventive, influenced by the rhythms of the internet, and infused with a particularly Gen Z sense of alienation. Irreverent and boundary-pushing, but not for its own sake, the novel that follows is muscular yet lyrical, riddled with paradox, and told with a truly rare and compelling clarity of voice. Brat is a serious debut that refuses to take itself too seriously.

Brat

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Charlotte Shane

A Memoir of Love and Sex Work

Through the lens of her years spent as a sex worker, Charlotte Shane offers a provocative and tender reckoning of what it means to be a heterosexual woman and a feminist in a misogynistic society. In her early twenties, Charlotte Shane quit her women’s studies graduate program to devote herself to sex work because it was a way to devote herself to men. Her lifelong curiosity about male lust, love, selfishness, and social capital dovetailed with her own insatiable desire for intimacy to sustain a long career in escorting, with unexpectedly poignant results. Shane uses her personal and professional history to examine how men and women struggle in their attempts at romantic and sexual bonding, no matter how true their intentions. As she takes stock of her relationships—with clients, with her father, with friends, with married men, and later, with her own husband—she tells a candid and haunting tale of love, marriage, and (in)fidelity, as seen through the eyes of the perpetual “other woman.” Braiding the personal and the universal, Shane’s memoir is a merciless and moving love letter to straight men and an indictment of habitual dishonesty, a condemnation of every social constraint acting on heterosexual unions, and a hopeful affirmation of the possibility for true connection between men and women.

An Honest Woman

4b621adb-a9df-433b-a4ac-afe0f41a0a1e-0

Monique Roffey

When a female musician is found murdered on a small tropical island, after a string of similar deaths, outraged local women take matters into their own hands. The quiet calm of Ash Wednesday morning. Carnival is over. Everyone on the small island of St. Colibri is sleeping peacefully. Everyone except Sora Tanaka, a young pan player lying under the cannonball tree. Sora, a professional musician, had been visiting St. Colibri to take part in the island’s famous steel pan competition. But Sora isn’t asleep; she’s dead: brutally murdered, and still in her costume. And as the women of this island know all too well, Sora is far from the first woman to be killed, and she probably won’t be the last, either. In fact, the problem of women being killed on the island is so bad, there’s even a dedicated unit within the police department: OMWEN, the Office for Murdered Women, headed by Inspector Cuthbert Loveday. In this powerful new rewriting of the detective novel, Sora’s death is the last straw and the beginning of something much larger, a "revolution" some are calling it. The event draws together four women who have never before seen each other as allies: a friend of the victim, the organizer of a sex workers’ collective, a local activist, and the prime minister’s wife. Tenderly, sometimes hilariously, Passiontide chronicles how these women join forces and find new ways to help one another.

Passiontide

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Zulema Renee Summerfield

A Barnes & Noble Discover Pick A debut novel about an imaginative girl in the year following her parents' divorce, and what happens when her creeping premonition that something terrible will happen comes true in the most unexpected of ways. The year is 1988, and America is full of broken homes. EVERY OTHER WEEKEND drops us into the sun-scorched suburbs of southern California, amid Bret Michaels mania and Cold War hysteria, with Nenny, a wildly precocious, nervous nelly of an eight-year-old, as our guide to the newly rearranged life she finds herself leading after her parents split. Nenny and her mother and two brothers have just moved in with her new stepfather and his two kids. Her old life replaced by this new configuration, Nenny's natural anxieties intensify, and both real and imagined dangers entwine: earthquakes and home invasions, ghosts of her stepfather's days in Vietnam, Gorbachev knocking down the door of her third grade class and recruiting them all into the Red Army. Knock-kneed and a little stormy-eyed, she is far too small for the thoughts that haunt her, yet her fears are not entirely unfounded. Indeed, tragedy does come, but it comes at her sideways, in a way she never had imagined. With an irresistible voice, Summerfield has managed to tap the very truth of what it is to have been a child of her generation, bottle it, and serve it up in devastating, hilarious, heartfelt doses. EVERY OTHER WEEKEND beautifully and unsettlingly captures the terrible wisdom that children often possess, as well as the surprising ways in which families fracture and reform.

Every Other Weekend

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Yoko Ogawa

Stephen B. Snyder

Hardcover in good condition. Spine is unbroken. Some black staining on the dust jacket from carrying it in my black leather bag. 

From the award-winning, psychologically astute author of The Memory Police, a hypnotic, introspective novel about an affluent Japanese family navigating buried secrets, and their young house guest who uncovers them. “Yoko Ogawa is a quiet wizard, casting her words like a spell, conjuring a world of curiosity and enchantment, secrets and loss. I read Mina’s Matchbox like a besotted child, enraptured, never wanting it to end.” —Ruth Ozeki, author of The Book of Form and Emptiness In the spring of 1972, twelve-year-old Tomoko leaves her mother behind in Tokyo and boards a train alone for Ashiya, a coastal town in Japan, to stay with her aunt’s family. Tomoko’s aunt is an enigma and an outlier in her working-class family, and her magnificent home—and handsome foreign husband, the president of a soft drink company—are symbols of that status. The seventeen rooms are filled with German-made furnishings; there are sprawling gardens and even an old zoo where the family’s pygmy hippopotamus resides. The family is just as beguiling as their mansion—Tomoko’s dignified and devoted aunt, her German great-aunt, and her dashing, charming uncle, who confidently sits as the family’s patriarch. At the center of the family is Tomoko’s cousin Mina, a precocious, asthmatic girl of thirteen who draws Tomoko into an intoxicating world full of secret crushes and elaborate storytelling. In this elegant jewel box of a book, Yoko Ogawa invites us to witness a powerful and formative interlude in Tomoko’s life. Behind the family's sophistication are complications that Tomoko struggles to understand—her uncle’s mysterious absences, her great-aunt’s experience of the Second World War, her aunt’s misery. Rich with the magic and mystery of youthful experience, Mina’s Matchbox is an evocative snapshot of a moment frozen in time—and a striking depiction of a family on the edge of collapse.

Mina's Matchbox

c315c97f-9727-48c5-a678-a97dca494b66-0

Scholastique Mukasonga

Melanie Mauthner

Good used condition. See photos for full details. 

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

For her most recent work and first novel - Notre-Dame du Nil, originally published in March 2012 with Gallimard in French - Mukasonga immerses us in a school for young girls, called Notre-Dame du Nil.' The book is a prelude to the Rwandan genocide and unfolds behind the closed doors of the school, in the interminable rainy season. Friendships, desires, hatred, political fights, incitation to racial violence, persecutions are all explored as the school becomes a fascinating existential microcosm of the true 1970s Rwanda.'

Our Lady of the Nile

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Kim Thúy

Sheila Fischman

Excellent used condition. Looks new, besides some pencil marks on the first page (pictured).

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2021 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE NOMINEE FOR THE 2021 GRAND PRIX DU LIVRE MONTREAL SHEILA FISCHMAN SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2021 COLE FOUNDATION PRIZE FOR TRANSLATION Kim Thúy's Em is a virtuosic novel of profound power and sensitivity, and an enduring affirmation of the greatest act of resistance: love. In the midst of war, an ordinary miracle: an abandoned baby tenderly cared for by a young boy living on the streets of Saigon. The boy is Louis, the child of a long-gone American soldier. Louis calls the baby em Hồng, em meaning "little sister," or "beloved." Even though her cradle is nothing more than a cardboard box, em Hồng's life holds every possibility. Through the linked destinies of a family of characters, the novel takes its inspiration from historical events, from Operation Babylift, which evacuated thousands of biracial orphans from Saigon in April 1975, to the remarkable growth of the nail salon industry, dominated by Vietnamese expatriates all over the world. From the rubber plantations of Indochina to the massacre at My Lai, Kim Thúy sifts through the layers of pain and trauma in stories we thought we knew, revealing transcendent moments of grace, and the invincibility of the human spirit.

06b69457-2981-4b7b-a51b-6913d5fe7fd0-0

Joy Williams

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Concerning the Future of Souls 

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Jessica Milan

Tumblr era Lookbook Cookbook. Fun fashion shots to accompany simple, delicious, gluten-free and vegan recipes. 

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

Simple, Delicious, Gluten-Free and Vegan Dishes for Fashion Loving Foodies

Vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, soy-free-but never boring. That's how Jessica Milan, creator of the eye-catching and mouth-watering site Lookbook Cookbook, describes her recipes. A model herself and fashion photographer, she has an incredible, fun and playful approach to her vegan cookbook full of beautiful people who don't quite take themselves seriously. Her desserts have been all over, including in Cosmopolitan, Vogue and Nylon (to name a few), but for the first time, she'll be sharing her delicious main course recipes with the world in Lookbook Cookbook. Tasty and healthy recipes include Peanut Butter + Jelly Pancakes, No Noodle Zucchini Lasagna, Quinoa Yam Burgers and Veggie Pad Thai. Each of the 80 recipes will be accompanied by the edgy photography Jessica is known for. Vegan? Gluten-free? Trying to eat healthier? Doesn't matter-you're all invited to the party. The appetizing, nutritious and creative vegan recipes in this book are each adorned by young beauties which makes this the hottest vegan cookbook out there.

Lookbook Cookbook

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Jeff Boyd

Good used condition. Paperback. Some slight bending to the front cover and wear on corners. Actual book pages are in good shape and unmarked. 

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

A powerful coming-of-age novel about a twenty-something Black musician living in predominantly white Portland, Oregon, playing in a rock band on the verge of success while struggling with racism, romance, and the legacy of his strict religious upbringing.

Julian Strickland is seemingly the lone Black man in the hipster dreamland of Portland, Oregon. To his friends, he's the coolest member of the scene: the soulful drummer from Chicago in an indie rock band that's just about to break through. But to himself, he's a sheltered Christian homeschool kid who used to write book reports on Leviticus. A virgin until the night of his marriage, divorced at twenty-four, he's still in disarray two years later--pretending to fit in, wondering if any of his relationships are real, estranged from his family, and struggling to reconcile his relationship with God.

Then he meets Ida Blair, a Black painter at the start of a promising career. They begin a tentative relationship, and Ida seems to offer Julian relief from his confusion. But suddenly she stops responding to his texts. Things only get worse when Julian's best friend mysteriously turns on him, his house burns down, and the band considers breaking up on the eve of their most important show yet. It seems the only thing Julian has left--the only thing he's ever had, really--is the weight he is carrying.

Jeff Boyd's beguiling first novel is a piercing exploration of faith, racial identity, love, and friendship--woven of acid humor, disarming vulnerability, and unforgettable poignance.

The Weight

423d09f3-4618-446f-aa9a-e158676b41d3-1

Sarah Sumner

Phillip E. Johnson

Excellent used condition. Some slight rippling on back cover as shown in last pic. Name written on inside cover.

Building Consensus on Christian Leadership

Men and Women in the Church

ef546e66-7a46-402b-b208-140f2652896a-0

Erika Kobayashi

Brian Bergstrom

"Delicately weaves generations of women to the lasting wounds of nuclear destruction and the hubris of war. A unique and unforgettable novel." --Kali Fajardo-Anstine, author of Woman of Light

A literary thriller about the effects of nuclear power on the mind, body, and recorded history of three generations of Japanese women.

Nine years after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster, Japan is preparing for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. An unnamed narrator wakes up in a cold, sterile room, unable to recall her past. Across the country, the elderly begin to hear voices emanating from black stones, compelling them to behave in strange and unpredictable ways. The voices are a symptom of a disease called "Trinity."

As details about the disease come to light, we encounter a thread of linked histories--Prometheus stealing fire from the gods, the discovery of radiation, the nuclear arms race, the subsequent birth of nuclear energy, and the disaster in Fukushima. The thread linking these events begins to unravel in the lead-up to a terrorist attack at the Japan National Olympic Stadium. 
 
A work of speculative fiction reckoning with the consequences of the past and continued effects of nuclear power, Trinity, Trinity, Trinity follows the lives of three generations of women as they grapple with the legacy of mankind's quest for light and power.

Trinity, Trinity, Trinity

5d1a11e4-1a63-4b6b-8d2d-e324bf511c64-1

Laura van den Berg

Stories

One of Entertainment Weekly's 50 Most Anticipated Books of 2020, one of O, the Oprah Magazine's 30 Most Anticipated Books of 2020, one of BuzzFeed's Most Anticipated Books of 2020, one of the BBC's Ten Books to Read in 2020, and one of The Millions Most Anticipated Books of the First Half of 2020 An urgent and unsettling collection of women on the verge from Laura van den Berg, author of The Third Hotel I Hold a Wolf by the Ears, Laura van den Berg’s first story collection since her acclaimed and prizewinning Isle of Youth, draws readers into a world of wholly original, sideways ghost stories that linger in the mouth and mind like rotten, fragrant fruit. Both timeless and urgent, these eleven stories confront misogyny, violence, and the impossible economics of America with van den Berg’s trademark spiky humor and surreal eye. Moving from the peculiarities of Florida to liminal spaces of travel in Mexico City, Sicily, and Iceland, I Hold a Wolf by the Ears is uncannily attuned to our current moment, and to the thoughts we reveal to no one but ourselves. In “Lizards,” a man mutes his wife's anxieties by giving her a La Croix–like seltzer laced with sedatives. In the title story, a woman poses as her more successful sister during a botched Italian holiday, a choice that brings about strange and violent consequences, while in “Karolina,” a woman discovers her prickly ex-sister-in-law in the aftermath of an earthquake and is forced to face the truth about her violent brother. I Hold a Wolf by the Ears presents a collection of women on the verge, trying to grasp what’s left of life: grieving, divorced, and hyperaware, searching, vulnerable, and unhinged, they exist in a world that deviates from our own only when you look too close. With remarkable control and transcendent talent, van den Berg dissolves, in the words of the narrator of “Slumberland," “that border between magic and annihilation,” and further establishes herself as a defining fiction writer of our time.

I Hold a Wolf by the Ears

38accf43-cd65-4915-b605-a08abbd543f4-1

Jeffrey Eugenides

Fair used condition. Some underlining and tabs (can remove tabs upon request). 

A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times Book Review • NPR • The New Republic • Salon • The Seattle Times • Houston Chronicle • The Miami Herald • Publisher's Weekly "Remind[s] us with uncommon understanding what it is to be young and idealistic, in pursuit of true love, and in love with books and ideas."—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times "A grand romance in the Austen tradition."—USA Today Are the great love stories of the nineteenth century dead? Or can there be a new story, written for today and alive to the realities of feminism, sexual freedom, prenups, and divorce? It's the early 1980s. In American colleges, the wised-up kids are inhaling Derrida and listening to Talking Heads. But Madeleine Hanna, dutiful English major, is writing her senior thesis on Jane Austen and George Eliot, purveyors of the marriage plot that lies at the heart of the greatest English novels. As Madeleine studies the age-old motivations of the human heart, real life, in the form of two very different guys, intervenes---the charismatic and intense Leonard Bankhead, and her old friend the mystically inclined Mitchell Grammaticus. As all three of them face life in the real world they will have to reevaluate everything they have learned. Jeffrey Eugenides creates a new kind of contemporary love story in "his most powerful novel yet" (Newsweek).

The Marriage Plot

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Ronnie Martin

Excellent condition. Journaling pages aren’t written on. 

25-Day Devotional for Advent

The God Who Is with Us takes readers through a twenty-five day Advent journey. Daily reflections on gospel truths drawn from Scripture will stir the imagination of the season while also reminding readers that God never abandons his people, but is present with them even in their most difficult seasons. Complete with beautiful, unique, thought-provoking illustrations and space for daily journaling and reflection, The God Who Is with Us provides readers with a meaningful keepsake to prepare them for the challenges of the New Year in light of the beauty of Advent. This beautiful, contemplative book will be a staple for many individuals and families around Christmastime for years to come!

The God Who Is with Us

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Rick Bennett

Buck Tilton

The Hidden Dangers of Camping and Hiking

How to avoid swallowing things that will make you turn green, and other backcountry health tips for only $8.95 Teaches campers and hikers how to avoid backcountry illnesses and even death due to food-borne diseases, sanitation problems, polluted water sources, and moreHandy pocket-sized guide gives practical, even humorous, information on camp cleanliness, waste disposal, water treatment, food management, and germ preventionHelpful appendices and chartsNothing soothes the soul like a great escape into the wilderness for a hiking or camping adventure, but what about your physical health? Without the proper awareness of the protozoa and parasites that await you, outdoor adventures can quickly become a nightmare of viruses and infections. Add animal-borne diseases like tick fever, rabies and trichinosis and many would-be adventurers might never leave their homes unless, of course, they have this book.This invaluable resource describes food- and waterborne diseases and explains how to prevent them; how to keep a clean c& how to choose the best water filter; how to select, manage, handle, and prepare foods; how to dispose of human waste and solid waste; and how to use leave-no-trace camping techniques in the backcountry. Don't Get Sick is is a must-have for everyone who spends time in the wild.

Don't Get Sick

99370427-ea32-4000-8c9a-1e72eb4ea192-1

Jack Kramer

Vintage 70s houseplant book with mustard hard cover. Damage to external spine, but pages are all secure inside. 

Easy Plants for Difficult Places

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Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

In like new condition, besides the remnants of a price tag sticker on the back cover. 

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

Award-winning author Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi's epic origin story is a beautiful and devastating portrait of a family of women: who they are, what history has taken from them, and--most importantly--how they find their way back to each other.

A Girl Is a Body of Water

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Jack Kerouac

In near perfect condition, except some minor scuffing on the bottom of the front cover. 

The Lost Novel

In the spring of 1943, during a stint in the Merchant Marine, twenty-one-year old Jack Kerouac set out to write his first novel. Working diligently day and night to complete it by hand, he titled it The Sea Is My Brother. Now, nearly seventy years later, its long-awaited publication provides fascinating details and insight into the early life and development of an American literary icon. Written seven years before The Town and The City officially launched his writing career, The Sea Is My Brother marks a pivotal point in which Kerouac began laying the foundations for his pioneering method and signature style. A clear precursor to such landmark works as On the Road, The Dharma Bums, and Visions of Cody, it is an important formative work that bears all the hallmarks of classic Kerouac: the search for spiritual meaning in a materialistic world, spontaneous travel as the true road to freedom, late nights in bars and apartments engaged in intense conversation, the desperate urge to escape from society, and the strange, terrible beauty of loneliness.

The Sea Is My Brother

6188fdc5-3c01-4df3-b85a-99816a5da398-1

Nicole Krauss

In good used condition. Some yellowing of pages. 

ONE OF THE MOST LOVED NOVELS OF THE DECADE.

A long-lost book reappears, mysteriously connecting an old man searching for his son and a girl seeking a cure for her widowed mother's loneliness.

Leo Gursky taps his radiator each evening to let his upstairs neighbor know he's still alive. But it wasn't always like this: in the Polish village of his youth, he fell in love and wrote a book...Sixty years later and half a world away, fourteen-year-old Alma, who was named after a character in that book, undertakes an adventure to find her namesake and save her family. With virtuosic skill and soaring imaginative power, Nicole Krauss gradually draws these stories together toward a climax of "extraordinary depth and beauty" (Newsday).

History of Love

35808268-45d6-47cf-933f-381c7d247586-1

John Steinbeck

“There it lay, the great pearl, perfect as the moon.” Like his father and grandfather before him, Kino is a poor diver, gathering pearls from the gulf beds that once brought great wealth to the Kings of Spain and now provide Kino, Juana, and their infant son with meager subsistence. Then, on a day like any other, Kino emerges from the sea with a pearl as large as a sea gull's egg, as "perfect as the moon." With the pearl comes hope, the promise of comfort and of security.... A story of classic simplicity, based on a Mexican folk tale, The Pearl explores the secrets of man's nature, the darkest depths of evil, and the luminous possibilities of love.

The Pearl

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Paraic O'Donnell

Library withdrawal. Plastic coating on dust jacket has been removed. Library stamps on top of pages and inside cover. Barcode sticker on back. Small cut in the dust jacket (last photo). 

Amid the fading grandeur of a country estate, Clara lives in the care of Mr Crowe, a man of many mysterious gifts, and his faithful manservant, Eustace. Free from rules and lessons, she inhabits a silent world of her own. She has her books, and her secret places. Mr Crowe was once the toast of the finest salons: a man of learning and means, he travelled the world, dazzling all who met him. Now, he devotes himself to earthly pleasures, while his great library gathers dust and his once magnificent gardens grow wild. But Mr Crowe and his extraordinary gifts have not been entirely forgotten. When he commits a crime of passion, he attracts the attention of Dr Chastern, the figurehead of a secret society to which Crowe still belongs. When Chastern comes to call him to account, his sinister attention is soon diverted to Clara. For Clara possesses gifts of her own, gifts whose power she has not yet fully grasped. She must learn to use them quickly, if she is to save them all.

The Maker of Swans

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Brit Bennett

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “Bittersweet, sexy, morally fraught.” –The New York Times Book Review "Fantastic… a book that feels alive on the page." –The Washington Post From the New York-Times bestselling author of The Vanishing Half, the beloved novel about young love and a big secret in a small community. Set within a contemporary black community in Southern California, Brit Bennett's mesmerizing first novel is an emotionally perceptive story about community, love, and ambition. It begins with a secret. "All good secrets have a taste before you tell them, and if we'd taken a moment to swish this one around our mouths, we might have noticed the sourness of an unripe secret, plucked too soon, stolen and passed around before its season." It is the last season of high school life for Nadia Turner, a rebellious, grief-stricken, seventeen-year-old beauty. Mourning her own mother's recent suicide, she takes up with the local pastor's son. Luke Sheppard is twenty-one, a former football star whose injury has reduced him to waiting tables at a diner. They are young; it's not serious. But the pregnancy that results from this teen romance—and the subsequent cover-up—will have an impact that goes far beyond their youth. As Nadia hides her secret from everyone, including Aubrey, her God-fearing best friend, the years move quickly. Soon, Nadia, Luke, and Aubrey are full-fledged adults and still living in debt to the choices they made that one seaside summer, caught in a love triangle they must carefully maneuver, and dogged by the constant, nagging question: What if they had chosen differently? The possibilities of the road not taken are a relentless haunt. In entrancing, lyrical prose, The Mothers asks whether a "what if" can be more powerful than an experience itself. If, as time passes, we must always live in servitude to the decisions of our younger selves, to the communities that have parented us, and to the decisions we make that shape our lives forever.

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