The Seven Daughters of Dupree Quotes

“Dear Sa’rah,
Who celebrates the dead ?
Who claps for the decapitated ?
The discarded
The forgotten
The answer is
We do
We speak
Her
And Emma
And Jubilee, who preferred Jubi
And Ruby
And Gladys, who I called Mimi
And Nadia, who you call Nana
And me, Tatiana, who you call Mama
And you
Who takes pride in legend ?
Who boasts about the beheaded ?
The cursed
The christened
The crowned
The answer is we do
We speak
To the land where she came in chains
Soil made rich and fertile by our blood
Connected in our bones
Bound through time like the sineus and tissues
She was here
As you are now

Who sings a mother’s song
Who finds joy in the souls on the other side
The angels
The ancestors
The ascendant architects of our purpose
The answer is we do
Because we remember”
― Nikesha Elise Williams, The Seven Daughters of Dupree

“Whiteness”
― Nikesha Elise Williams, The Seven Daughters of Dupree: A Novel

“She studied his face, looking to see if he too wore a mask like her mother. One that taunted. She was looking for any sign to send her home to the women she knew, even if she knew very little. Ruby was unsure of whether she wanted to learn someone else who might find her refreshing in the high heat of the day, but a poor salve for the soul by the time it ended.”
― Nikesha Elise Williams, The Seven Daughters of Dupree

“Sorrow hugged her words.”
― Nikesha Elise Williams, The Seven Daughters of Dupree

“Whiteness, she believed, was not only color, because some people had olive undertones, like the swarthy Greeks and Italians she’d seen working for Logan’s family in Birmingham. It wasn’t just class, because admittedly some of them were poorer than the colored folk on the side of the tracks. It was more affectation and flair. An attitude of ownership. That you were owed shit. The world. The day. The night. The people. The bodies. The labor. And, of course, the money. If you could have the audacity to believe yourself appointed above all, delude yourself into believing that you were victim, yet posed as the victor while still demanding more tokens and tributes to affirm and establish the position you created for yourself, were you not white? After all she’d done, was she not white?”
― Nikesha Elise Williams, The Seven Daughters of Dupree

“Losing children, three snuffed out before they could even be considered, was a kind of pain Emma wore every day. She knew it well. She had gotten used to the cold spot in the bed; it had been there ever since Jeremiah. In life she learned that all you love you lose. Everything ends up on the other side.”
― Nikesha Elise Williams, The Seven Daughters of Dupree