One Survives by Hiding

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This is an elegy to the women whose lives were taken at three Atlanta spas this past spring, targeted by the shooter to relieve his sex addiction. ‘R&R’ is military slang for ‘rest and recuperation’, as using the body of a woman to combat the trauma of battle. War shaped the body of my mother, and her features in mine, continue to incite jokes about sexual violence. The connection between immigration and the countries whose infrastructures, economies and environments were ruined by US presence remains unseen. My family survived by hiding these atrocities from the children they raised in the US, genuinely wanting to protect us from the past. But keeping them hidden lets the violence survive too.