More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with the shades of deeper meaning.’
I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy.
have tried often to search behind the sophistication of years for the enchantment I so easily found in those gifts.
He explained when we were smaller that when things were very bad his soul just crawled behind his heart and curled up and went to sleep.
He was away in a mystery, locked in the enigma that young Southern Black boys start to unravel, start to try to unravel, from seven years old to death.
life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice.
The unquestioning acceptance by my peers had dislodged the familiar insecurity.
‘That’s what you want to do? Then nothing beats a trial but a failure. Give it everything you’ve got. I’ve told you many times, “Can’t do is like Don’t Care.” Neither of them have a home.’
‘Life is going to give you just what you put in it. Put your whole heart in everything you do, and pray, then you can wait.’
‘God helps those who help themselves.
Without willing it, I had gone from being ignorant of being ignorant to being aware of being aware.
To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision. Few, if any, survive their teens. Most surrender to the vague but murderous pressure of adult conformity. It becomes easier to die and avoid conflicts than to maintain a constant battle with the superior forces of maturity.
Until recently each generation found it more expedient to plead guilty to the charge of being young and ignorant, easier to take the punishment meted out by the older generation (which had itself confessed to the same crime short years before). The command to grow up at once was more bearable than the faceless horror of wavering purpose, which was youth.
The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time that she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power. The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.
