The Revisioners Quotes

“Now, hate,” she started, “ain’t no use in hate, Josie. Ain’t no use in hate,” she repeated. “Whatever you trying to get away from, hate just binds you to it. You find, even when you think you found a way out, God will bring it back to you, slap you right in the face with it. Where you thought it had gone missing. So don’t ever say hate.”
― Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, The Revisioners

“He's a black man in this world," Major has scolded me. "You got him used to sweetness when life gon' be tart.”
― Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, The Revisioners

“I keep quiet for a while. Most of the time, the most powerful part is bearing witness.”
― Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, The Revisioners

“what happens to the ancestor spirit when it dies?” “It comes back into my children, their children, their children’s children.” She paused again, let me consider what I’d said. “You ever think about what it will come back to?” she asked. “No, ma’am,” I said back. “Well, you think about it, because it’s up to you. The ancestors come back with whatever heart they left behind. If it’s a hateful one, they come back hating. Whoever they hated come right back with them, in one form or another.”
― Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, The Revisioners

“I’m tired of being the bigger person with these people,” he says. “I’m tired, Mama.” I can see the weight of his exhaustion straining his spirit, and I feel guilty for bringing him in this world to bear it. I put my hand on his back. “What was it your daddy used to say?” I ask. “You got to give respect to get it.” “They killed that good pig and you talking to me about respect.” Eliza walks up to comfort him, but he turns away from her, toward me. “I’m sorry, Mama,” he says. “I’m just tired. I’m just so, so tired. I’m tired of carrying it. I want somebody else to carry it for a minute. It never lets up. It’s like somebody’s fingers pinching me on the inside of my chest, and it won’t ease up, it won’t let me feel like a man. It won’t never let me feel like a man. That’s all I want is to go somewhere with my child, and feel whole, all the way, but it won’t let me, but you got these white people out here not good enough to shine my shoes and they get to feel like there ain’t no limit to what the world owes them.” He pauses. “Jericho looks up to me, I can feel it. He always in my shadow and it should feel good but it wears on me ’cause I know one day he gon’ look at me the way I looked at Daddy the first time I saw him for who he really was. And I can’t bear it, Mama. I swear to God I can’t bear it.” I”
― Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, The Revisioners

“Anyway she’s becoming a friend.” Link drops her fork. “Now, sister, you don’t want no part of that,” Link says. “Not a half of a part, nor a quarter. Our people can’t be friends with theirs, you know that. They’re not capable of it. They think friend mean mule. They think friend means they can take and take and you never get tired of giving. Suppose you don’t give her what she think she deserve,” she goes on. “All that disappointment gon’ turn to rage and all that rage gon’ fall on you.”
― Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, The Revisioners

“I could prepare my bath with white women’s tears,”
― Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, The Revisioners

“I could see Mama shaking her head. She didn’t like discord; not just that, she forbade it. She said that’s what white people wanted, for us to take ourselves down. We already did their work for them in the fields and in the house, and then so many of us did their work for them in our own minds.”
― Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, The Revisioners

“Old age has been the biggest shock of my life. I don’t have any models for how to live it out right. My own mama taught me how to clean between my legs, to fry fish in a lean fire. But nobody taught me how to sit down.”
― Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, The Revisioners

“What’s a miracle? Something you can’t explain coming to pass; something that doesn’t make sense existing anyway. So much of the day is miraculous. And if you notice one example, you’ll get pointed in the direction of another. The insides of them, that buzz, that fire, will fill you up inside and you can put your hand out and touch something commonplace and watch it bloom into something else that shouldn’t be. There’s the stuff of miracles swimming all inside you, all around you, you just haven’t reached in and grabbed it yet.”
― Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, The Revisioners

“Don’t confuse weakness with strength. You want somebody to do something for you, you bend over backwards to do it for them. That is how it goes with respect.”
― Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, The Revisioners