Opposing Forces

Abstract

“Opposing Forces” encompasses both the beginning of a novel-in-progress as well as short stories, which examining the dualities of life. How can we make peace with the dissonance that lies within us and the world-at-large? When the labels and boundaries we impose on ourselves become more entrenched, how can we find refuge in our contradictions? Who are we when those labels fall away?

The novel-in-progress chronicles four generations of women in the Peterson family as they make a home on the Sea Islands of South Carolina in the early1900s, and follow the Great Migration north to Baltimore and Philadelphia, continuing their lineage to the present day. Structured as a series of vignettes before and after actual historical hurricanes known for their intensity and destruction, the narrative illuminates the dualities in the Peterson women lives’: motherhood and infertility, familial bonds and disowned outcasts, Christian faith and hoodoo practice, and generational trauma and solace.