Shan Cawley

All My Men depicts female wounding - by the hands of a father, a brother, a son, a friend, or a former lover. This knife’s hacking is shoved deeply into the side of a woman, whether she be me or otherwise - and beneath those wounds is the tissue that heals, however slowly. That healing is discovered and reproduced within the very walls of this library, whether it be uttered in the poetry of Sylvia Plath or the academic prose of bell hooks. Reading is a form of self-discovery and liberation - without those books, their words, and the walls of the Wise Library, that knife would continue to cut deeper than bone marrow