Last Summer on State Street Quotes

“We didn't know then that the practice of burying emotions created adults who'd struggle to build meaningful relationships; some of us would eventually completely forget how to access true feelings”
― Toya Wolfe, Last Summer on State Street

“Black kids ain’t got the luxury of not knowing what they want to do,” she said, and I felt stupid. She kept talking, because Mama Pearl was never in the business of making you feel good when she thought you needed a lesson.”
― Toya Wolfe, Last Summer on State Street

“That girl in Roseland had called me a project kid, and it was the one slur I couldn’t get out of my head that whole summer.”
― Toya Wolfe, Last Summer on State Street

“Anything can make you vulnerable to name-calling, and those names cut into the skin sometimes, enter the bloodstream. Somehow that summer, I stumbled upon an important fact about naming: it also has the power to build people up.”
― Toya Wolfe, Last Summer on State Street

“Maybe the worst part about growing up in public housing is that people think your body is public too. That even before you are born, your Black body already belongs to the owners of the land. That night, Meechie spent about two hours in jail, and that's all it took to cement his identity.”
― Toya Wolfe, Last Summer on State Street

“The memories won't go away; they're proof that once upon a time, I lived in a brick skyscraper on State Street, in a place where stairwells filled with echoes stampeding gym shoes and harmonizing winos. These memories won't let me believe that I dreamt up Precious, Stacia, and Tonya, but All in Together is over.”
― Toya Wolfe, Last Summer on State Street

“Mama Pearl told me that they Chicago Landmarks. I’m writing this letter mostly because I wanna tell you that YOU a landmark too.”
― Toya Wolfe, Last Summer on State Street

“That night, he went to jail because he was Black and a boy, and to the police, that fit the description of a criminal. I’d learn that Black kids didn’t get the luxury of appearing childlike and innocent, that from the moment we are born, some people start a clock on how long it’ll take the boys to commit a crime, the girls to seduce.”
― Toya Wolfe, Last Summer on State Street

“The land had returned to its humble beginnings, back to before someone decided to overcrowd it with bricks and gates and too many people.”
― Toya Wolfe, Last Summer on State Street

“The essence of optimism is that it takes no account of the present but it is a source of inspiration, of vitality and hope where others have resigned. It enables a man to hold his head high, to claim the future for himself and not to abandon it to his enemy.”
― Toya Wolfe, Last Summer on State Street

“Fee, you know what I think? The boys who done already made a plan for they lives, they do better than the ones who get invited into somebody else’s. I ain’t worried about you and no gangs, but if you ain’t thinking about what you want with this life, you might just fall into somebody else’s vision.”
― Toya Wolfe, Last Summer on State Street

“I heard someone say, “Cause she from the projects.” That hurt more than those kicks to my side.”
― Toya Wolfe, Last Summer on State Street

“I’d learn that so many things that I thought were solid and structured in my life could be broken down, bit by bit, just like those buildings.”
― Toya Wolfe, Last Summer on State Street

“The man who shows up on holidays resembles my brother, and sometimes can access the emotion and memory of who he once was, but mostly, he is the man he decided to become so that he could stay alive.”
― Toya Wolfe, Last Summer on State Street

“I couldn’t tell by her expression if she felt disgust or sadness, but I knew that she was taking a moment before our departure to remember her childhood and also the many traumatic events that she’d lived through, especially losing her son to first a gang, then the criminal justice system.”
― Toya Wolfe, Last Summer on State Street

“The boys who done already made a plan for they lives, they do better than the ones who get invited into somebody else’s.”
― Toya Wolfe, Last Summer on State Street

“She wanted us to be tough. To stay focused. To remember, “If you want to be in a position where the government can’t uproot your life so easily, go get an education, and you’ll have more control over your situation.”
― Toya Wolfe, Last Summer on State Street

“we both missed our friends and weren’t really trying to replace them only to lose the new ones too.”
― Toya Wolfe, Last Summer on State Street

“On the porch, I’d look at the beautiful skyline and the playground and people moving around, but not without that gate in my face; at Robert Taylor, we were always watching the world through those bars. Like we were in captivity and wouldn’t ever be free.”
― Toya Wolfe, Last Summer on State Street

“Mama slept through the whole night. Maybe, as a mom, she had heavier guilt and stress about losing Meechie, and it dragged her down into a deep slumber.”
― Toya Wolfe, Last Summer on State Street

“I thought about how silly that was. That was the most dangerous part of the block? The demolished building? There wasn’t enough caution tape in the world for our neighborhood.”
― Toya Wolfe, Last Summer on State Street

“It didn’t matter if Mama nurtured or ignored him; the cowboys watched, waited for him, and then they decided it was time.”
― Toya Wolfe, Last Summer on State Street

“quick something so special can turn to nothing.”
― Toya Wolfe, Last Summer on State Street

“It seemed like a flaw to have these emotions. We didn’t know then that the practice of burying emotions created adults who’d struggle to build meaningful relationships; some of us would eventually completely forget how to access true feelings.”
― Toya Wolfe, Last Summer on State Street

“At church, we looked up for so long, that when we came back down to our lives, we felt stronger to deal with the mess.”
― Toya Wolfe, Last Summer on State Street

“them trains from the South, then this here moving from neighborhood to neighborhood. It’s sheeping. Folks gathering up coloreds and sheeping them this way and that. They done sheeped your brother into prison. Trying to sheep us on further into the South Side.”
― Toya Wolfe, Last Summer on State Street

“Child, Bible say, no new thing under the sun. This here migrating, it’s all we been doing: them ships from Africa,”
― Toya Wolfe, Last Summer on State Street

“I looked at her. My eyes grew wider, because I realized that Mama Pearl was telling me that years ago, the same thing happening to us, happened already; that a whole neighborhood of Black people had to get up and leave because people with wealth and power wanted the land they’d settled on.”
― Toya Wolfe, Last Summer on State Street

“Then, the Illinois Institute of Technology say, I want this land for a school building. You coloreds gots to go. So in 1952, they close it and tear ’em down.”
― Toya Wolfe, Last Summer on State Street

“it seemed to add a new crack in my heart.”
― Toya Wolfe, Last Summer on State Street