Black Girl Unlimited Quotes

“I begin to wonder if white is the color of things to be worshipped in this world. If it's the only color to be worshipped in this world.”
― Echo Brown, Black Girl Unlimited

“What dreams have they forced you to defer?
Did you want to be a pilot and fly planes?
Did they say you wouldn't make it in the Ivy League?
Did you want to be a poet and write your poems in the stars like the ones that came before?

Maybe the darkness inside stole your dreams?
Left you broken and buried
In a womb of despair
Did you have the rise up out of the dirt, too,
Learn to cultivate the light again, too?

Did you ever think you would watch your parents crawling around on the floor, chasing the white ghost?
Did you ever think would be next?

What kind of dreams you got festering, burning inside you?
How many nights you had to sit on the ceiling,
Waiting for dem dreams?
Chasing dem dreams
Hoping they wouldn't steal dem dreams?
Tell me 'bout dem dreams
Tell me what dey was

What dreams have they forced you to defer?
And what do you plan to do about it?”
― Echo Brown, Black Girl Unlimited

“My brothers are no longer children, and they're already trapped in a school system that is failing them, just like the mayor says.”
― Echo Brown, Black Girl Unlimited

“Usually, all of us have some kind of bad story seeds that eventually sprout into a solid harvest. If you want a lush, beautiful harvest, you must replant yourself from the inside. You must uproot all those bad seeds planted by others and plant new ones that will grow different stories inside you.”
― Echo Brown, Black Girl Unlimited

“I ask you: Who is more triumphant than black people? Who walking the earth has been more triumphant than the children of the sun?”
― Echo Brown, Black Girl Unlimited

“Many people have called my mother strong—relatives, neighbors, friends, teachers. Those same people have called me strong, too. They have said wizards are unbreakable, but I’m not sure anymore. They call us warriors because we survive it and they call us strong because it doesn’t topple us. They call us magic because we manage to make miracles out of it. “Wow! Look at her take it all! She’s so strong!” But for us, it’s not a victory. It’s a bloodbath. What happens after the bloodbath, when we finally fall?”
― Echo Brown, Black Girl Unlimited

“The tenth lesson of wizard training is to pay attention to warning signals in your life. Become alert to what the universe is trying to point you away from. If you can wake up fast enough, certain tragedies (though not all) can be avoided. And for those times when you don't manage to wake up fast enough, be kind to yourself in the storm that will follow.”
― Echo Brown, Black Girl Unlimited

“It's interesting to me how a person can change so much on the inside while their environment remains the same-- and then how different that same environment looks after the change. I wonder how different this place will look when I come back from college. If the place that made me will eventually feel like Mars.”
― Echo Brown, Black Girl Unlimited

“We were free. We were unlimited. We didn’t yet know or understand race and class and all the intersections between them, so we were not yet black, at least not on the inside. Our psyches were still free from the troubles of the world.”
― Echo Brown, Black Girl Unlimited

“I don’t understand how she can make so many miracles and yet cause so much chaos. How she can be so dazzling and destructive at the same time.”
― Echo Brown, Black Girl Unlimited

“I begin to wonder if her Bible-thumping Jesus-loving is an act to provide her with the illusion of certainty and stability in the world. Deep down, if she has sat on the ceiling before, she must know there are other ways, other truths, other powers. My mother runs from this power and these truths with the alcohol and the white rocks. Ms. Jannie runs with her Jesus and a religion she knows is not always the answer. Right now, she knows it is not the answer.”
― Echo Brown, Black Girl Unlimited

“My mother says you have to be grateful for the people you knew in childhood since the people you meet as an adult “is already ruined and no good, but you always ’member da innocence of peoples you knew as kids.”
― Echo Brown, Black Girl Unlimited

“Then eventually wails from my mother herself, when she realized what was happening, what she had done. The authorities didn't believe her, of course, because she wasn't a child in their eyes. She was a black child. And a black child is just as guilty as a black adult in the eyes of the law. So they dragged her away in handcuffs while she screamed, "Noooo! It was an ccident! I didn't mean to! No, please! Noooo!" She screamed with the intensity and high pitch of a child who has just lost everything. She was only ten years old, but she knew her life was over from that point on. She decided right then that there could be no redemption for her and that she must be irreversibly broken.”
― Echo Brown, Black Girl Unlimited

“The mayor says, "That school is a disaster that needs to be repaired and restored immediately, but the city is broke and who pays the price for an inadequate education? You guessed it, the students.”
― Echo Brown, Black Girl Unlimited

“reach down into my soul again for courage and remind myself, If you can, you must, which is something Mrs. Delaney always says to us. I realize that I’m probably going to have to reach for courage for the rest of my life, so I may as well practice now. I can do this.”
― Echo Brown, Black Girl Unlimited

“If you can wake up fast enough, certain tragedies (though not all) can be avoided. And for those times when you don’t manage to wake up fast enough, be kind to yourself in the storm that will follow.”
― Echo Brown, Black Girl Unlimited

“For the entire bus ride back to my apartment after the field trip ends, I think about our conversation. Elena is nothing like the story I made up in my mind. How many other people are living lives outside of what I imagined for them? Probably all of them. I wonder how two people from such different parts of the world can have so much in common. And I wonder how two people from the same neighborhood can be so different.”
― Echo Brown, Black Girl Unlimited

“it’s a soundtrack to their lives. When Sam Cooke cries, “A change is gonna come,” or when Marvin Gaye asks, “What’s going on?” my parents and their friends lament their own conditions. They complain about how “the government don’t give a fuck ’bout da niggas.” How it’s all designed for them to fail and how things “gotta get betta in da future. The Lawd’a see to it.”
― Echo Brown, Black Girl Unlimited