"But you were indignant. And sometimes the difference between individual and organized indignation is the difference between criminal and political action."
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"But you were indignant. And sometimes the difference between individual and organized indignation is the difference between criminal and political action."
"But Owen will not die of old age. Owen will die of love. The Danish West Indies will become the United States Virgin Islands and this patriarch will die. And perhaps these things are the same."
Finished. // "...to be distanced, of only for a moment, from fear is not a passport out of the struggle. We will always be black, you and I, even if it means different things in different places."
"Black people love their children with a kind of obsession. You are all we have, and you come to us endangered. I think we would like to kill you ourselves before seeing you killed by the streets that America made."
"It struck me that perhaps the defining feature of being drafted into the Black race was the inescapable robbery of time, because the moments we spent readying the mask, or readying ourselves to accept half as much, could not be recovered."
"...there is the burden of living among Dreamers, and there is the extra burden of your country telling you the Dream is just, noble, and real, and you ate crazy for seeing the corruption and smelling the sulfur."
Newest additions. Long list ahead of me, but these might get bumped up a few notches.
Finally cracking this one open. 🤓
"It was plain to me that we couldn't look to the kourts for freedom and justice anymore than we could expect to gain our liberation by participating in the u. s. political system, and it was pure fantasy to think we could gain them by begging."
The only difference between here and the streets is that one is maximum security and the other is minimum security. The police patrol our communities just like the guards patrol here. I don't have the faintest idea how it feels to be free.
Spending some time with Chinua. Read this over a decade ago, good time for a refresher. ☕️📚
Finished! The more I read about the past, the more I see it reflected in the present. This was a great book.
Further learning: there are interviews with the writer talking about his experience of "being Black" on YouTube.
Warsan -- Not gonna lie, I got this because of Beyonce's Lemonade (🐝🍋). Hadn't heard of her work before, but so so glad I did. Marking this as something I've read, completed, but I don't know that the work of her words will ever actually be finished in me. Wowow.
Apathy is the same as war,
it all kills you, she says.
Slow like cancer in the breast
or fast like a machete in the neck.
"Choices are a privilege defined by circumstance. In this country, the circumstance is always racism, oftentimes poverty. The two combined strip our choices away to the minimum."
Went to see Mychal read from his new book last night. Proud of this guy ✊🏾
"He who molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions," Abe Lincoln once said. "He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed."
Finally took this back off the shelf, promised myself I'd finish it this time 🤓
Betty cried out "They're killing my husband!" and it absolutely tore me up. This book was beautiful. - complete ✔️
Addressing a large audience in Ghana: "I am not anti-American, and I didn't come here to condemn America -- I want to make that very clear!" I told them. "I came here to tell the truth -- and if the truth condemns America, then she stands condemned!"
Finished If Beale Street Could Talk today! Loved it but is there a part 2?! Like, what happens to Fonny? Ugh.
I heard the title might be connected to a song called Beale Street Blues, I'll have to take a listen.
Anywho, 2 down 1 to go, GTIOTM some other time. 📚
Finished during today's afternoon commute. I devoured this; quick read, but I'll def need to revisit it. So much searing truth within a few pages. A bit blown away. Also TNC inception: found the sentence that Between the World and Me came from.
"The South deluded itself with the illusion that the Negro was happy in his place; the North deluded itself with the illusion that it had freed the Negro. The Emancipation Proclamation freed the slave, a legal entity, but it failed to free the Negro, a person."
Eye-opening re: justice & US history!
