The Handmaid's Tale

Don't let them teach you the size they need you to be.

Nolite te bastardes carborundorum, fake Latin, real fuel. I carved it into my patience.

The butchers' section: the wall, the hooks, the bags. Atwood's economy of horror.

Offred's mother marched so her daughter could be captured by the counter-march. History loops ugly.

Scrabble with the Commander. The most chilling date in dystopia.

There's more than one kind of freedom, freedom to and freedom from. The book's hinge.

Mayday, said Ofglen. Two syllables of conspiracy that kept a whole book breathing.

The Salvagings where everyone claps. Collective joy as an instrument of cruelty.

The Historical Notes at the end, scholars joking two hundred years later. The coldest epilogue.

Carried out of it: keep a sentence hidden somewhere. Stories out-survive regimes.