Jackal Quotes

“Your beauty is denied but replicated. Your sexuality is controlled but desired. You take up too much space, but if you are too small, you are ripped apart. Despite the wash of it, that’s one thing you can always count on whiteness to do: destroy a threat.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“When your name is in other people's mouths, they twist it up. They make you into something you are not. When people take you outside yourself, that is when trouble comes.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“Danger for Black girls was different. It didn’t obey the boundaries of stories. For them, it was always real.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“One drop in this country is all it takes. Being a Black girl is inhabiting a cruel riddle: Your beauty is denied but replicated. Your sexuality is controlled but desired. You take up too much space, but if you are too small, you are ripped apart.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“If there’s one thing fear can do, it’s make a beast out of a shadow. It turns us all into monsters.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“After a life of shadows, finally, in death, I am seen.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“Myths are as much a part of the slipstream of Black life as joy. Yes, Black folks are masters of joy. Trauma isn’t the only thing carried in DNA. Blackness, like any Golden Fleece, is both a birthright and what lies at the end of a quest.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“She didn’t need to be an adult to know that sad men are the most dangerous.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“Danger didn’t need a place to hide, it preferred to fester. First it would smile and bring you German chocolate cake. Then it would wait out in the open on your front porch until it felt good and ready.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“Being blind to color only makes you blind.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“We are good Black people. Good Black folks who don’t bring up race. We don’t make a fuss; we don’t make things uncomfortable; we are calm and cool and collected at all times. Even in the face of death. I think of how I couldn’t fight back. I think of how Garrett tolerated the slaughter of the deer.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“Everyone in this town─this country─is so afraid of the other, whoever the “other” is today. If there’s one thing fear can do, it’s make a beast out of a shadow. It turns us all into monsters.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“Looking at her, I realize the story of Farrah is more exciting than the reality. Nothing in the woods made her go “mad.” The indifference of the world did that.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“But learning, naming, and confronting what makes us afraid and uncomfortable, no matter how ugly, is key to understanding and ensuring it never happens again. Sometimes anger comes with truths like this.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“Stuck is more than a location,” she said. “It’s a state of mind.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“I was supposed to start a clinic here. I had everything ready to go and then that girl disappeared from your school. I got scared. The threats came in their little baggies. I shut everything down because I was scared. The anger in this country, it is not like Ayiti. I used to think it was gone. Or neutered. But it is here. It is a matter of who gets to be angry and who gets to seek vengeance or claim justice. The anger here is not the kind that starts revolutions, it is the kind that wages wars. We fight other countries, the news, the politicians, all fight fight fight and bicker bicker bicker. There are lines and systems—rules of engagement. In Ayiti, the government and the people have an uneasy deal. They cross each other often. When I lived there, it made me edgy. The way things are here, people go so far out of their way to smile to your face and stab you in the back. Even with the language: English. You have to put together so many words to be understood. That is not even being heard, just understood.” Her eyes go back to the deer. She”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“Everyone’s suffered. What does it matter if one person suffers more than another? We’re all in pain.” Kirsten rubs her eyes and smiles at me with all her teeth. “It’s enough to drive you mad.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“Myths are as much a part of the slipstream of Black life as joy. Yes, Black folks are masters of joy. Trauma isn’t the only thing carried in DNA. Blackness, like any Golden Fleece, is both a birthright and what lies at the end of a quest. What myth lay just beyond Kayla’s fingers? The woods.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“A luxury of girlhood is being able to play on other people’s anxieties without consequence. If you make a girl cry, you must be sorry. If a girl offers you an imaginary phone, you answer it. If a girl reaches for your hand, you take it. In womanhood, all those exchanges become contingent on her ability to pay a price. Sometimes this toll is exacted with no regard for the willingness of the woman.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“All we have is the present. In grief I exist moment to moment. It doesn’t mean grief doesn’t visit my dreams or wrap around my body in the middle of the day. It does.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“People in America love to believe in freedom, even though it isn’t free. It never was. Not even for those who emblazon it across their cars, patios, and homes. The history of freedom is much older than plastic flags and banners.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“Much is expected of me, my friends, my life, every second I’m here, because my life was never mine. Instead, it’s a summation of her sacrifices.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“Everyone thinks they know what my anger looks like. They think it’s screaming and yelling and fighting. Sometimes anger is a low vibration, the coil before the spring. Sometimes it sinks inside me and paralyzes me.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“Over time, I’ve learned to suspect men who are kind without reason. No one operates from the goodness of their hearts.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“Doubt can open a door in you for anything to walk through.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“What is a little erasure if it ensures excellence? It’s just a little bit of yourself. The bit that doesn’t fit.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“Like every small-town citizen in America, my teacher believed Black people were an alien anomaly in white suburban perfection.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“Tanisha’s life stopped. Time continued, but she was forever divided: There would always be before this moment and after it. With each passing second, the pain of the present robbed the past of its luster.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“When your past exists in shadow, you seek your home any way you can.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“How are you?” “Here.” He stops. “That’s all Mel wanted for the wedding. It was why it was all so last-minute. She wanted to celebrate what we had right then. That whole day and every day after she kept telling me to be here with her. Not ahead or behind. All I could think about was tomorrow.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal