The body as writing paper

"I learnt to write when I was almost six and at the same time also discovered the magic of my own body as a writing surface....

"We felt the words in gradual bursts of pain, the first words we had written would become less felt, the pain of that scratching now faded, and the last words where we had dug too deep would be pulsating still, unable to be quiet."

(from "Writing Near the Bone" by Yvonne Vera, in Women Writing Africa: Volume 1: The Southern Region)

There is no essential truth about being a female writer

"There is no essential truth about being a female writer. The best writing comes from the boundaries, the ungendered spaces between male and female.....

"I like to think of writing in limitless terms, with no particular contract with the reader, especially that of gender. When I have discovered that unmarked and fearless territory then I am free to write, even more free to be a woman writing. Sometimes the light coming through my window has been much more important than the fact that I am a woman writing."

(from "Writing Near the Bone" by Yvonne Vera, in Women Writing Africa: Volume 1: The Southern Region, p. 488-) 

--Submitted by Beth Blevins.