May 23, 2025
Ajanaé Dawkins takes a more empathetic view of the past in ‘Blood-Flex’
“I had a deep fixation with witnessing the women in my life, the women who raised me, and seeing their interiority and their relationship with the world, and then thinking about our relationship,” said Dawkins, who eventually scrapped this original collection as she began to reassess the power she had as the writer in terms of framing these family stories, as well as the ways in which she might have absolved herself in these initial tellings.