Why God Is a Woman

A man is meant to do physical labor and menial jobs like paving roads, sweeping floors, and cleaning latrines, for this is the work God designed for Island men. If God had wanted men to do office work, he would have made them less muscular, less angry, less beautiful, less eager for sex and war

women rule. They run the country, control the wealth, and decide who will do what, why, and when.

On the Island where I come from
the first signs of puberty happen at night. A boy wakes to feel a fire inside him, like an ache, a hunger, an indefinable wish, followed by the first prickling of wings. It hurts so much when the wings break through the flesh, each wing-bone a knife in the skin. (Picture it as the sharp beak of a baby bird pecking its shell. Only the shell is a skin full of nerve-endings.) Then there is the blood, the shame, the need to cover it up so no one will know. This, the boy learns, is how it feels to be a man. Nothing he does, says, or prays can ever make him feel safe from what he has become