What Lies Between Us
Nayomi Munaweera
Top 10 Best Quotes
“They say that family is the place of safety. But sometimes this is the greatest lie; family is not sanctuary, it is not safety and succour. For some of us, it is the secret wound. Sooner or later we pay for the woundings of our ancestors.”
“In Sri Lanka, when two strangers meet, they ask a series of questions that reveal family, ancestral village, and blood ties until they arrive at a common friend or relative. Then they say, "Those are our people, so you are our people." It's a small place. Everyone knows everyone. "But in America, there are no such namings; it is possible to slip and slide here. It is possible to get lost in the nameless multitudes. There are no ropes binding one, holding one to the earth. Unbound by place or name, one is aware that it is possible to drift out into the atmosphere and beyond that, into the solitary darkness where there is no oxygen.”
“Leaving is an act that cannot be undone.”
“It was something I learned then. That you could take the crumpled remains of something destroyed and smooth them into newness. You could pretend certain things weren't happening even if you had seen or felt them. Everything done can be denied.”
“Yet there are moments when I feel a continent apart, when their belonging seems easy and unforced and my own is only pantomime.”
“They hate me because I am the worst thing possible. I am the bad mother. But here's a secret: in America there are no good mothers. They simply don't exist. Always, there are a thousand ways to fail at this singularly important job. There are failures of the body and failures of the heart. The woman who is unable to breastfeed is a failure. The woman who screams for the epidural is a failure. The woman who picks up her child late knows from the teacher's cutting glance that she is a failure. The woman who shares her bed with her baby has failed. The woman who steels herself and puts on noise-canceling earphones to erase the screaming of her child the next room has failed just as spectacularly. They must all hang their heads in guilt and shame because they haven't done it perfectly, and motherhood is, if anything, the assumption of perfection.”
“I lie there in the magic grove, being hummed at by trees with ancient memories, lulled by their stately breath, held in the embrace of their roots.”
“Whole generations of students were blown off their life courses, rendered jobless, unmoored by direction or occupation. My father raged about the incessant closing of the university.”
“Then too, motherhood is broken because in this place, to be a good mother is to give yourself completely. It is to erase yourself. This is what I refused to do.”
“On a fulcrum in my chest, grief and relief are balanced in equal measure.”
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Book Keywords:
motherhood, respect, mothers, challenges, wounded-souls, aloneness, secrets, community, paradox, secrets-and-lies, displacement, immigration-experience, family-relationships, illinois-budget, mother, judgement, belonging, conflicted, family, life, leaving, ancestry, ancestors, wounds-to-the-heart, travel, denial, feelings, moving-on, sri-lanka, politics
