Rebecca Hall > Quotes

“They say that the trauma of our ancestors are stored inside us: in our bodies, our minds, our spirits. So too is our resilience.”
― Rebecca Hall, Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts

“History written by the victors always erases the resistance. And those of us who live in the wake/ruins learn that we're inferior and needed to be conquered and enslaved. This is the afterlife of slavery that the victors need us to inhabit. One in which we have always already lost and have accepted our fate a handed to us.”
― Rebecca Hall, Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts

“Ehen we go back and retrieve our past, our legacy of resistance through impossible odds, our way out of no way, we redress the void of origin that would erase us. We empower and bring joy to our present. This is ancestry in progress, and it is our superpower.”
― Rebecca Hall, Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts

“You think you are reading an accurate chronicle written at the time, but if we are and what we care about are deemed irrelevant, it won't be in there.”
― Rebecca Hall, Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts

“We reach the final stage of healing from trauma when we integrate the past into who we are. It becomes a part of us that we acknowledge and provides understanding of our world [...] Our memories must be longer than our lifetimes.”
― Rebecca Hall, Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts

“Is there any space left in these documents for the testimony of Sarah, Abigail, Lily, or Amba? No, only this: "Having said no more than she had previously said for herself." No one bothered to record what they had said before. This is one way history erases us. What we had to say was not even considered important enough to record.”
― Rebecca Hall, Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts

“We reach the final stage of healing from trauma when we integrate the past into who we are. It becomes a part of us that we acknowledge and provides understanding of our world.

The past is not a ghost we want to banish or exorcise; it is something we want to internalize.

Like at a wake, a wake as in a funeral, we speak of the dead for the dead. At this wake, we must defend the dead. Our memories must be longer than our lifetimes.”
― Rebecca Hall

“As Audre Lorde said, "We were never meant to survive." But we have. Four hundred years of slavery and all that it has wrought. The historical archive that violently erased our past continues its violence against us. This also shapes what we believe is even possible for us in the future.”
― Rebecca Hall

“Have you ever seen something out of the corner of your eye, but when you turn your head to focus, it's gone? Like invisible forces have shaped everything around you, but you've lost the words to describe them. This is what it means to live in the wake of slavery.”
― Rebecca Hall

“Laying aside gendered assumptions, I could start over and ask, "Why would there be more revolts on ships where there were more women?" The answer was immediately obvious to me: the people who regulated this business, developed slave ship operating procedures, and actually ran the ships, kept women mostly unchained, on deck, and near the weapons.”
― Rebecca Hall

“History written by the victors always erases resistance”
― Rebecca Hall, Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts

“Living in the wake of slavery is haunting, and to experience this haunting is to be nothing less than traumatized. Still, it is possible to heal from trauma, or come to terms with it.

At first, we try to block out the horrors of the past - to ignore them, to pretend they are not there.

The next step is to acknowledge the past and its harm, even as it triggers us. We try to avoid looking at it too closely. But the ghosts are everywhere; they have been waiting for us all along.”
― Rebecca Hall

“But we hav always resisted slavery. Our constant resistance was central to bringing about slavery's end. I came here not only to recover then history of this resistance, but also to specifically find the women whose stories had been written out of slave revolts. After reading every scrap of every story about slave revolts, I came across ones that included women, but only if I read between the lines.”
― Rebecca Hall, Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts

“For hundreds of years, our ancestors were brutally silenced. I wasn't supposed to find their voices. But sometimes, when you thinking you're hunting down the past, the past is hunting you...”
― Rebecca Hall, Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts