Volunteer Slavery Quotes

“Some people who "go crazy" simply get tired, disgusted with life and with themselves, and decide to let go. It's a psychological version of Zen submission, except instead of entering an ashram or going to meditate in the Himalayas, they retreat inside themselves. It's not that I cannot cope. I simply no longer want to.”
― Jill Nelson, Volunteer Slavery: My Authentic Negro Experience

“Now, I am just tired of the lines, the silence, the circles of bullshit. I want out of my closets.”
― Jill Nelson, Volunteer Slavery: My Authentic Negro Experience

“The thing that I find so seductive about liquor is that it's legal, and thus subject to quality control. Unlike smoke or dope, you don't have to risk arrest, go into sleazy neighborhoods, deal with a criminal element, or become part of a criminal element to get a drink. You also always get what you pay for. So, unless you're drooling, drunkenly lascivious, or passed out, no one ever has to know that you've had too much, that you're an alcoholic--not even you.”
― Jill Nelson, Volunteer Slavery: My Authentic Negro Experience

“He seems to think that since she's a white feminist and I'm a black woman, we are organically simpatico.”
― Jill Nelson, Volunteer Slavery: My Authentic Negro Experience

“I don't give a goddamn how much they're paying you, it's not enough. They'll buy you and try to steal your soul, too. You're too good for them, too good. Don't sell yourself cheap.”
― Jill Nelson, Volunteer Slavery: My Authentic Negro Experience

“I feel I owe my daughter stability, bourgeoisdom, charge accounts at Woodies, a chance to join the mainstream. I will be the Cosmo mom, the queen of having it all, and my daughter a Cosby clone. For $50,000 smackeroos, how bad could it be?”
― Jill Nelson, Volunteer Slavery: My Authentic Negro Experience

“My mammying days are over.”
― Jill Nelson, Volunteer Slavery: My Authentic Negro Experience

“I am living a fantasy, a dream. I have gambled on living by the word, not the sword, and won.”
― Jill Nelson, Volunteer Slavery: My Authentic Negro Experience

“It is a latter-day version of passing, in which the thing to be disguised is not the color of one's skin, but one's corporate affiliation. If the early 1970s was a time when black people decided to "join the system and change it from within," by the late 1980s some of us have realized that the system isn't changing, we are--and not necessarily for the better.”
― Jill Nelson, Volunteer Slavery: My Authentic Negro Experience