Listen for It
This is a dissertation, yes, but more importantly, it is the first official history of the twenty-first century’s most unlikely outlaws.
Though the events chronicled here occurred only five years prior to this publication—a blink of an eye to most historians—many of my fellow scholars still deny they ever happened, insisting that everything contained within these pages is more legend than truth, fiction spun to legitimize what we, in retrospect, might rightly call a movement.
How do I know they’re wrong?
Because I was there. In the following pages, I will play not only your archivist but your witness.
My first task, then, is to prove that the organization we now know by the name of Our Ladies of the Dark began long before anyone realized, and with far different aims. This will not be an easy feat: While the myths spun about the early group have been formidable, little exists in the way of verifiable evidence.
As you will see, it is as if the main actors in our story were hell-bent on erasing themselves.
—Frances Vogel, “Our Ladies of the Dark: A History,” PhD dissertation presented to the UCLA Department of History