Lakewood

I've been crying for an hour, since I reached part two. I am trying to act nornal in my plane seat right now.

I have read a lot of shocking, gory, surreal, unsettling literature. I love shit that makes me want to turn away, to cringe, to stand up and walk away. I have never been so nauseous that I had to stop reading a book and watch a youtube video to take my mind off what I'd just read. I only do that when I wake up from nightmares where I'm being chased by unnaturally large spiders, or where there are bees so deep in my ears that those hoes are in my g-ddamn brain. This was incredible, and no one in my life can read it because reading this means knowing that Giddings has a industrial-size drill, and this novel aims right for the pupil and makes you watch in the mirror as it pushes and pushes, veins popping out with the strain. I forgot where I was while reading it. I felt my stomach turn over at the mundane cruelty of it, the terror of looking down the barrel of something evil that asks, would you tolerate what I can do to you if it meant you would be safe, happy, and fed for the rest of your life?

I shocked myself with how fast I started to cry when the main character described the vacations she wanted to take her ailing mother on in France. I couldn't read the screen with how watery my eyes got as she watched the video on the tablet in the cabin. I felt fear. Real, honest-to-YHWH fear. This novel should be taught in schools, in college. This should be mandatory reading for anyone interested in learning about American history of medicine, of anti-Black racism, of governmental power, of how Americans consider class, of psychology as a created industry, of what the mind does when put under primal pressure in a postmodern world.  

Beautiful prose. Babies screaming like melted glass, foaming lakes, nights as creatures. 

I don't know what else to say. Don't read this in public. Hold your loved ones tight. Don't drink anything you didn't watch be poured. Don't trust anyone in a labcoat. Read this yesterday.