Deathless Divide (Dread Nation, #2)

by Justina Ireland

They think I was the cause of their undoing. And why not? A mouthy Negro girl without any kind of sense? I am the world’s most perfect scapegoat.

“Faith is for people that got hope, Gideon, and I’m afraid that’s been in short supply for a long minute.”

Jane is the proverbial bull in the china shop, and while she is highly effective against the dead she is terrible at navigating the intricacies of human interaction.

That is the problem with fear—it is like wildfire, traveling fast and hot, leaving only ashes behind.

And when white people are scared it’s the Negro that bears the brunt,”

And at some point you folks will think the answer yet again is to throw us colored girls at another problem of your own making.”

We can fight together or we can die alone.

“There is a way past every wall, and all guns eventually run out of ammunition,”

I learned long ago that you should never trust a man who treats you like a longtime friend.

“There ain’t any kind of inoculation against fear and false confidence.”

suppose when lines are drawn it is easier to go with what one knows than to forge new paths.

This is getting worse by the minute. “Are you comparing me to the people who took you from your home and tortured you?” That gets a laugh out of him, the sound rich and deep. “No, Jane, listen. You’re so damn impatient you won’t even listen to the lesson long enough to properly ignore it.” I take a deep breath and let it out. “Okay, fine.”

“Is it the dead?” she asks. “Ain’t it always?”

Jackson told me that life starts off bloody and ends that way, and I’ve always believed him. I guess I’ll get to see him again, even sooner than I expected.

I have had quite enough of men and their advice in my eighteen years.

“Things would start to change,”

“The world naturally trends toward injustice, and it is colored folks who bear the brunt of that. The moment it looks like a Negro will break out of those chains, both real and metaphorical, the faster folks are going to arrive with their torches. First, they will try to offer helpful advice; next, they will try to burn you out for your own good. I reckon if it had not been for the Years of Discord and the enterprising nature of the Chinese folks in San Francisco, the white people here would have found a way to force the Chinese out. But they are too powerful, so white folks are directing their ire at the Negro sector instead. It is no different from what the writings of Mr. Frederick Douglass predicted.” Sue gives me a bit of side-eye. “I don’t know who that is.” “I read some of his essays to you on the boat over here. Remember? ‘Power concedes nothing’? Either way, Miss May is right. If the Negro wants to flourish, then they will have to find a place to put down roots and push them down so deep that nothing, not even the dead, will be able to pry them loose.”

I like to rehearse conversations in my head before they happen, because otherwise I get a feeling like being in an unmoored dinghy on a storm-tossed sea. And that usually results in me giving a polite smile and agreeing to all sorts of nonsense I have no intention of following through with.

“But shouldn’t you be dead, then?” I nod and grin. “But I’m a she-devil, and we dance with the dead for fun.”

All the money in the world cannot make a colored person worthy to some folks.

More people just means more complications.

A lot of people die, but they deliver these great soliloquies before they go. Well, at least the men do.”

“A body has to want to be courted to be courted,”