More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Granddaddy used to comb my hair like he was mad at it. This some wooly shit, boy! You sho got some nappy-ass hair, he’d mumble until he tamed the wild bush or cut it off altogether. I remember seeing white boys in town and watching their hair wave easily in the wind, and I wondered why God hadn’t given me that. A
They love when we talk nonviolence. It means they go home alive while we bury each other.”
“Just ’cause a few crackers do a few good things don’t mean white folks ain’t the problem.”
But I know plenty Colored people who hate Colored people. And that’s worse.”
But the reason black people hate black people is ’cause white people made us hate ourselves.”
We didn’t start this mess about light skin versus dark skin and all that shit. They started that. We just inherited it.”
Every time we stand together, they shoot us down!
Colored people been standing together since we got off that goddamn boat! That’s the only way we’ve survived—by standing together.”
Anger dwells in the head, then fades. Hurt lingers in the soul.
You were freer in your spirit than me, which, of course, I resented.
I saw Elliott Strong in your eyes. It was the same longing, the same soft, lingering pleading I beheld that awful day.
You had been inducted into a lineage of strong black men because you were my son. There was no greater joy.
Your mother’s reaction was surprising. It seemed she’d never considered this. I couldn’t understand why. There was nothing particularly boy-like about you, and that had always been true. Yet maybe, in her mind, the two things—a boy’s softness and his urges—had nothing to do with each other. I disagreed. I thought one was
A disobedient child was the ruin of a people, we thought, so we didn’t allow it. Plus, we needed someone beneath us, someone we could beat and low-grade—the way white folks had done us.”
Just remember that, although we were flawed, we were marvelous, too.
No one can make you happy if you’re determined to be miserable.
