Aisha Harris > Quotes

“Like many millennials have realized, there comes a point where you have to stand on your own apart from your parents and your family's lineage. You have to find happiness and peace, even if that means distancing yourself from where you come from.”
― Aisha Harris, Wannabe: Reckonings with the Pop Culture That Shapes Me

“Black art isn't a package of long-stemmed wineglasses that must be handled with care. Black art isn't fragile.”
― Aisha Harris, Wannabe: Reckonings with the Pop Culture That Shapes Me

“When I’m searching for meaning, validation, or a challenge, I’ll often find it through an exchange between fictional characters or in the lyric of a transformative album.”
― Aisha Harris, Wannabe: Reckonings with the Pop Culture That Shapes Me – A New York Times Best Read and Cultural Critic's Essays on Nineties Black Identity

“There are at least two things someone can do to convince me to never take them seriously: (a) engage in bad-faith arguments about people being “canceled” when what they’re really referring to is people being called out and/or held accountable for their actions, and (b) accuse someone of “making everything about race” merely for pointing out something racist.”
― Aisha Harris, Wannabe: Reckonings with the Pop Culture That Shapes Me – A New York Times Best Read and Cultural Critic's Essays on Nineties Black Identity

“...Sparks of inspired creativity can be found even when the kernels of an idea are derivative.”
― Aisha Harris, Wannabe: Reckonings with the Pop Culture That Shapes Me

“Elder millennial Britney [Spears] is an extreme real-life example, but my generation at large, and the ones coming up behind us, are not okay in many ways. And a lot of us are talking more openly and unashamedly about it, even if -- or perhaps especially if -- it means having to call out the people who helped raise us.”
― Aisha Harris, Wannabe: Reckonings with the Pop Culture That Shapes Me

“Just think of all the myths predominantly white Western culture has been primed to believe in: Christopher Columbus's "discovery" of the New World, the origins of Thanksgiving, the Lost Cause, the American Cowboy, capitalism, the War on Christmas. Years, sometimes centuries later, what were once facts have hardened in the cultural imagination into something other than what they originally were, having morphed and become about as reliable as a phrase passed along in the midst of a game of telephone. They've become convenient tales of bravado and pride, frequently in service of upholding white supremacy.”
― Aisha Harris, Wannabe: Reckonings with the Pop Culture That Shapes Me

“I may wear a t-shirt that reads "Girls Rule" in pink and purple glitter, but it's more an aspirational statement than a real, tangible fact.”
― Aisha Harris, Wannabe: Reckonings with the Pop Culture That Shapes Me