I was trying to find a poetics of my own, with no maps, no guides, not much to go on.
-- Rebecca Solnit (Looking Glass House)

Importance: Solnit says this of her early search as a young woman and writer, for a language in which she would be free to use her own voice, to explore the world the way she wanted to. The line acts as a sort of thesis statement for the memoir to come. Throughout the chapters that follow, Solnit encounters countless maps, guides, borders, and blockades to becoming the woman and artist she is today.

There are so many ways people are forced to disappear, uprooted, erased, told that this is not their story and not their place.
-- Rebecca Solnit (Foghorn and Gospel)

Importance: Solnit says this while reflecting on her Lyon Street community. After making connections with, and learning the stories of her neighbors, she begins paralleling the marginalization of non-white identities to female identities. As gentrification rapidly...