Exhibit O: “June” read by V. Efua Prince

1

I dreamed I was carrying a dead man on my back. The stench of his decomposing flesh poisoned each breath. His weight bent my shoulders like a sack filled with cotton. He had been dead long enough for his flesh to yield its contents so I was soiled beneath the mass. But I held his arms and kept a labored pace. When I woke, I buried him without ceremony. I did not mark the date.

2

What’s left? Memory. But where is it lodged? In the brain as images? In the flesh as disease or scar tissue? In the air like a virus? In the soil like seed? In the marrow of bone….

–excerpt from “June”

V Efua Prince is a professor of African American Studies at Wayne State University whose research centers on the complexities of home. Her writing often takes an interdisciplinary form as history, poetry, drama, and performance, in order to transform the history of black women into political art. She is the author of Burnin’ Down the House: Home in African American Literature (2005), Daughter’s Exchange (2018), and numerous other creative works. First published in The Masters Review, Prince’s award-winning essay, “June,” represents the interconnectedness of rape with global and historical factors.