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Kindle Notes & Highlights
Safe movement through the world depended on mastery of language, fluency.
Religion is just a controlling tool they employ and adhere to when convenient.”
the better they feel, the safer we are.”
where does a slave put anger?
I will not let myself, my mind, drown in fear and outrage. I will be outraged as a matter of course. But my interest is in how these marks that I am scratching on this page can mean anything at all. If they can have meaning, then life can have meaning, then I can have meaning.
The boy was highly excited by the adventure of it all. I admired that, was envious of it, to tell the truth, to be able to feel that in a world without fear of being hanged to death, or worse.
At that moment the power of reading made itself clear and real to me. If I could see the words, then no one could control them or what I got from them.
White people love feeling guilty.
When you are a slave, you claim choice where you can.
“Tell the story with your ears. Listen.”
I admire those who, at five years of age, like Venture Smith, can remember the clans of their ancestors, their names and the movements of their families through the wrinkles, trenches and chasms of the slave trade.
“Folks be funny lak dat. Dey takes the lies dey want and throws away the truths dat scares ’em.”
“If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not learning.”
A man who refused to own slaves but was not opposed to others owning slaves was still a slaver, to my thinking.
