Uncle Tom's Children Quotes

“Having been thrust out of the world because of my race, I had accepted my destiny by not being curious about what shaped it”
― Richard Wright, Uncle Tom's Children

“Ah tol yuh t leave them Reds erlone! They don mean nobody no good! When men starts t deny Gawd, nothin good kin come from em!”
― Richard Wright, Uncle Tom's Children

“Ah done lived all mah life on mah knees, a-beggin n a-pleadin wid the white folks. N all they gimme wuz crumbs! All they did wuz kick me! N then they come wida gun n ast me t give mah own soul! N ef Ah so much as talk lika man they try t kill me . .”
― Richard Wright, Uncle Tom's Children

“Thas the reason why they kill us! We take everthing they put on us! We take everthing! Everthing!” “Yuh cant do nothin erlone, Jimmy!” Jimmy’s voice was tense, almost hysterical. “But we kin make em know they cant do this t us widout us doin something! Aw, hell, Pa! Is we gonna be dogs all the time?” “But theyll kill yuh, son!” “Somebody has t die!”
― Richard Wright, Uncle Tom's Children

“Who wuz they, Pa?” “Yuh cant do nothin, son. Yuhll have t wait. . . .” “Wes been waitin too long! All we do is wait, wit!”
― Richard Wright, Uncle Tom's Children

“Mabbe they white folks anyhow. He would be better off as he was; even six white men were better than a mob of white men.”
― Richard Wright, Uncle Tom's Children

“We jus as waal git killed fightin as t git killed doin nothin,” said Jimmy sullenly.”
― Richard Wright, Uncle Tom's Children

“Yet, in spite of all this, the life of the hotel ran with an amazing smoothness. It would have been impossible for a stranger to detect anything. The maids, the hall-boys, and the bell-boys were all smiles. They had to be.”
― Richard Wright, Uncle Tom's Children

“It would have been almost impossible for Wright to conceive of interracial efforts to bring about economic justice without first acknowledging the shared experience of oppression. The deterministic perspectives of the naturalists helped to provide him with this insight.”
― Richard Wright, Uncle Tom's Children

“Long hours of scrubbing floors for a few cents a day had taught her who Jesus was, what a great boon it was to cling to Him, to be like Him and suffer without a mumbling word.”
― Richard Wright, Uncle Tom's Children

“Thingsll awways be like this less we fight!” “Set down, son! Yo po ol pas a-beggin yuh t set down!” He pulled Jimmy back to the bed. But even then it did not seem he could speak as he wanted to. He felt what he wanted to say, but it was elusive and hard to formulate. “Son. . . .” “Ah ain gonna live this way, Pa!”
― Richard Wright, Uncle Tom's Children

“Some day theys gonna burn! some day theys gonna burn in Gawd Awmightys fire! How come they make us suffer so? The worls got too mucha everthing! Yit they bleed us! They fatten on us like leeches! There ain no groun yuh kin walk on tha they don own! N Gawd knows tha ain right! He made the earth fer us all!”
― Richard Wright, Uncle Tom's Children

“But he could not run in a white neighborhood. To run would mean to be shot, for a burglar, or anything.”
― Richard Wright, Uncle Tom's Children

“The room grew quiet. “Whut yuh mean, Brother Smith?” asked Taylor. “Ah say Ahm gonna hep mah people!” said Deacon Smith again. Taylor walked over to him. “Is yuh gonna tell the white folks on us?”
― Richard Wright, Uncle Tom's Children

“Whut else they say, Reveren?” asked Deacon Bonds. Taylor sighed. “They say wes mixed up wid the Reds. . . .” “N by Gawd we is!” bawled Deacon Smith. “At least yuh is! Ah toi yuh t leave them Reds erlone! They don mean nobody no good! When men starts t deny Gawd, nothin good kin come from em!”
― Richard Wright, Uncle Tom's Children

“Listen, boy! I want you to get this straight! Reds aint folks! Theyre Goddam sonofabitching lousy bastard rats trying to wreck our country, see? Theyre stirring up race hate! Youre old enough to understand that!”
― Richard Wright, Uncle Tom's Children

“He began to talk to no one in particular; he simply stood over the dead white man and talked out of his life, out of a deep and final sense that now it was all over and nothing could make any difference.”
― Richard Wright, Uncle Tom's Children

“She felt that merely to go so far away from home was a kind of death in itself. Just to go that far away was to be killed. Nothing good could come from men going miles across the seas to fight. N how come they wanna kill each other? How come they wanna make blood? Killing was not what men ought to do.”
― Richard Wright, Uncle Tom's Children

“The afterglow lingered, red, dying, somehow tenderly sad. And far away, in front of her, earth and sky met in a soft swoon of shadow.”
― Richard Wright, Uncle Tom's Children

“Why don they hep me? Yet he knew that they would not and could not help him, even as he in times past had not helped other black men being taken by the white folks to their death”
― Richard Wright, Uncle Tom's Children

“There is but one place where a black boy who knows no trade can get a job, and that’s where the houses and faces are white, where the trees, lawns, and hedges are green. My first job was with an optical company in Jackson, Mississippi. The morning I applied I stood straight and neat before the boss, answering all his questions with sharp yessirs and nosirs. I was very careful to pronounce my sirs distinctly, in order that he might know that I was polite, that I knew where I was, and that I knew he was a white man. I wanted that job badly.”
― Richard Wright, Uncle Tom's Children

“She finished by telling me that I ought to be thankful to God as long as I lived that they didn’t kill me.”
― Richard Wright, Uncle Tom's Children

“Furthermore, she suggests that in focusing on the extent to which racism constitutes “an affront to the masculinity of black men,” Wright reveals his inability to appreciate fully the pervasive nature of the sexism that is so deeply implicated in the oppressive patriarchal social order in the United States.23”
― Richard Wright, Uncle Tom's Children

“Yet half a century later it appears that Wright was reacting less to particular flaws in Uncle Tom’s Children and more to mainstream American culture’s capacity to defuse the potency of harsh critique through the very act of commercial consumption and subsequent emotional release. This is not to imply that Wright’s first book is without weaknesses.”
― Richard Wright, Uncle Tom's Children

“In particular, Wright viewed the attempt by whites to break the spirits of Southern blacks, to make them complicitous in their own oppression, as perhaps the key racist imperative; and he resisted as doggedly as he could.”
― Richard Wright, Uncle Tom's Children