Status Updates From Notes of a Native Son

Sometimes a book will cut you so deep to wake you up that you have no choice, but sit and watch yourself bleed. The distractions of this government are transparent. I read black stories and support black authors 365 days. This month, I am going back to the “classics” to help me refocus and recenter myself. “I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.” James Baldwin.

“And, indeed, within this web of lust and fury, black and white can only thrust and counter-thrust, long for each other’s slow, exquisite death; death by torture, acid, knives and burning; the thrust, the counter-thrust, the longing making the heavier that cloud which blinds and suffocates them both, so that they go down into the pit together.”

damn

“And this meant that in some subtle way, in a really profound way, I brought to Shakespeare, Bach, Rembrandt, to the stones of Paris, to the cathedral at Chartres, and to the Empire State Building, a special attitude. These were not really my creations, they did not contain my history; I might search in them in vain forever for any reflection of myself. I was an interloper; this was not my heritage.“