Sommer Schafer’s Comments

These very short stories were written at entirely different times using entirely different prompts as part of an exercise with my writing group, The Fiction Forge. But I like the surprising evolution that emerges among the different narrators as the stories progress: woman knows that she has learned to please others above all else (stage 1, and, unfortunately, I think all too common behavior for women even today); woman wishes she could find some damn realness instead of partaking in a loss of humanity by hiding under shallow pleasantries (stage 2); woman, at long last, comes into her own by doing something that is honest and brave, and results in a kind of empowerment, a little joyful freedom (stage 3).

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