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Maybe there’s a reason why Black boys like me don’t have magic powers. Because no good ever comes from it.
Pride is the Devil.
My face shifts from intimidating to jovial—to keep my ass alive.
As I think it, so it shall be.
There’s no use in holding on to bad memories when you can make new ones.
You wanna make God laugh, tell him ya plans.
“Well, hello there.” The way she talks, it sounds like she’s not even from this time.
I glare at Mama Aya with a flash of vulnerability. But I snatch that shit up and place it behind my emotional walls.
what I experienced today is what they call family. But all I saw was a hundred and one strangers.
In this world of extraordinary shit, that’s the most ordinary thing I’ve seen so far.
Let us all lead with love and know our roots are deep, numerous, and vivacious.
CHAPTER EIGHT They say love is like the sea. Because of its vastness, we really don’t understand it fully. But we know it moves with a rhythm, and it’s deeper than anything in this world. It’s endless, and it always comes back to shore.
Magic always comes with a price.
“The first nation to actually abolish slavery was Haiti in the Haitian revolutionary war in 1804.”
“Dutty Boukman was a warrior. A powerful Voodoo priest and a leader of the Maroons who led the charge in 1791 that birthed the very genesis of Haiti.”
It’s political. Just like everything in this world. Because the normal boring-ass American school system is racially biased.
“America got ninety-nine problems, but the truth ain’t one.”
“The Haitian Revolution was a successful insurrection led by Toussaint Louverture. It was the only revolution or rebellion that led Haiti to be free from slavery. It was against white supremacy. Against all that they’d ever known. That is the real reason why it’s not taught.
“This is why the Catholic and Christian missionaries made it their mission to demonize Haitian spiritual practices. Spreading misinformation about Haitian Vodou. Villainizing Black magic,”
That’s all they’re getting outta me. No cap, I learned the hard way about spilling your whole life story to people you barely know.
magic always comes with a price.
“Voodoo, which is from the original word
Vodun, is a religious belief system originating in Africa. The motherland. Whereas Hoodoo is a derivative of the teachings of Vodun. Enslaved folks and their descendants took what they learned in their native ways and modernized it and mixed it with Christian ideology. The origins being from Kongo/Igbo.” “Correct,
Hoodoo is not some chicken bones and tarot cards. It’s a calling. It’s a purpose. It’s transforming.”
“Them heffas in Salem was trynna bust it open, and in turn built their magic off the backs of our ancestors—and then blamed our Black queen Tituba for the mess. If that ain’t America, I don’t know what is.”
“There is duality in things.
Don’t ever apologize for showing your gift.
trouble always have a way of finding the good in the world.”
Chancellor Taron really got me at this magical-ass HBCU, taking regular classes like algebra?
“Don’t ever make yourself small. You are very gifted, and you belong here, Malik. No matter how much this world tries to make you feel that you don’t.”
“Harriet Tubman. She had the gift of seeing things happenin’ before they even happened.”
Love to see you young, beautiful Black men in here readin’.
Black folks and watermelon actually have a positive relationship. Back in the Reconstruction era, Black farmers sold watermelon as a means of income. Profited greatly because of it. Some even became millionaires. White people grew jealous of this self-sufficiency, Malik, and deemed watermelon as this stereotypical and uncouth thing that Black people eat.
The medic gave me some healing properties that made the fresh burn go away in an instant. Got me feeling like brand-new and everything. It was actually kinda cool, because all she did was read some passages from the Book of Psalms, and boom—I was all healed.
Remember the last time there was a war, and our own blood was shed? We cannot let it get that far again. We are still rebuilding our community.”
“You belong here, Malik,” he tells me. “You just have to act like it.”
‘We as a people always had to make a kingdom out of nothing.’
A kingdom built on the bones and the river of blood from those who came before us, and those who comes after.”
Resilience is a form of magic…that’s
I decided to write about the similarities between Christianity and Hoodoo in America. Zora Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men was a great resource.
“People are often scared of what they don’t understand. Or they take something that’s extraordinary, and they try to snatch any and everything good about it.”
it’s not the actual hurt that is the most painful. It’s the letting go.
“Dear Black girl, you are wrapped in gold. Your hair twists down your head like roots from a tree—you are wonderfully and fearfully made. You are the living image of God herself. Dipped in honey and mahogany. The standard, even when they try to tell you you’re not. Black girl, you are the foundation. The lineage that holds a million generations.”
“To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.”
“Pain is life. And life is hell.
I’m so fuckin’ tired of people telling me they love me, when all they did was hurt me. Love shouldn’t fuckin’ hurt.”
Black folks gon’ laugh at tragedy, because it is what it is.
She ain’t our mama no more. She’s our enemy.
Black boys like me do have magic powers.
tignon
