Of her title character, Bitter, Akwaeke Emezi writes:
Bitter had bounced around foster homes since she was a baby, ending up with a steady foster family when she was eight, and she had removed all memories of the years before that, on purpose, because she needed to stay sane and some memories were like poison.
~
It isn’t strength, necessarily, but strategy that has helped me be a mostly functional human in a mostly dysfunctional world. And by strategy I mean systems to pull me forward, habits and routines to keep me present, and intentional amnesia combined with selective disassociation to handle my history. I only take poison in small doses, if at all.
~
Coming in 2024, my new series, Microdosing Reality.