Three Girls from Bronzeville Quotes

“We are nicked and chipped, bruised and battered. Like my grandmother’s glass figurines, we position ourselves to hide our defects. We learn how to move forward.”
― Dawn Turner, Three Girls from Bronzeville: A Uniquely American Memoir of Race, Fate, and Sisterhood

“I never knew I thought I was invincible until I realized I wasn't.”
― Dawn Turner, Three Girls from Bronzeville

“Sometimes people don’t change for the better,” he said. “We say to ourselves, there’s a chance they will get better. But there’s a chance they won’t. That’s the alternate story nobody wants to see.”
― Dawn Turner, Three Girls from Bronzeville: A Uniquely American Memoir of Race, Fate, and Sisterhood

“Having come of age in Bronzeville, Mom had seen urban renewal several times over. She’d known this geography back when the area teemed with tenement housing, cold water flats, and kitchenettes. She had moved her family into Lawless around the time the Ida B. Wells Homes had begun its slide. The city’s housing authority had stopped screening applicants as it once had, and not long afterward it would get rid of its on-site janitorial staff. It simply stopped demanding of itself and its residents the things required to maintain a healthy and humane development. Later still, residents would have to contend with dysfunctional policing practices and crooked cops. The acclaimed investigative reporter Jamie Kalven, a dear friend, would write extensively about a team of corrupt Chicago officers who operated for years in the Ida B. Wells housing project and others. Then the world would look at what ails Chicago, particularly its violence, and pretend to wonder how it happened and how to fix it.”
― Dawn Turner, Three Girls from Bronzeville: A Uniquely American Memoir of Race, Fate, and Sisterhood

“It’s been eleven years. I can tell you when it all started. It was when I put Hannah in that private school. She was only there for second grade. Afterward, she went back to a public school. But he’s never forgiven me. It was like he saw me as a traitor, someone who no longer shared his values or dreams.” “You thought you were doing what was best for your daughter.” “Exactly. But after he saw me as a traitor, that was further validated when I stopped eating meat or if I asked him to read something and didn’t take his suggestions. It’s hard to live with someone who doesn’t like you. We both changed, but not together.”
― Dawn Turner, Three Girls from Bronzeville: A Uniquely American Memoir of Race, Fate, and Sisterhood