.

“What do you call the animal that, finding the hunter, offers itself to be eaten? A martyr? A weakling? No, a beast gaining the rare agency to stop. Yes, the period in the sentence—it’s what makes us human, Ma, I swear. It lets us stop in order to keep going.
Because submission, I soon learned, was also a kind of power. To be inside of pleasure, Trevor needed me. I had a choice, a craft,
whether he ascends or falls depends on my willingness to make room for him, for you cannot rise without having something to rise
over.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“In history class, Mr Marsden asked us to write about an interesting member of our family. I wrote what I knew about my father's upbringing in Jamaica, using a word himself used - anglocentric - to describe his schooling. When my essay was returned, anglocentric was circuled in red, an 'No Such Word' written in the margin. I was starting to understand that those in the centre didn't need the language to describe their privilege.”
― Hannah Lowe

“Sometimes I can be walking down the street, or riding a bus, and suddenly I see somebody who remind me of somebody I know back home, and I close my eyes and find myself thinking of the sea, or the taste of grafted mango, or the smell of saltfish frying, and then I come back to myself and open my eyes and realise where I am.”
― Caryl Phillips, In the Falling Snow

“Your hands are hideous—and I hate everything that made them that way. I hate how they are the wreck and reckoning of a dream.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous