Glory Edim > Quotes

“Books bring me joy. They’ve always been a space to reflect and see myself.”
― Glory Edim

“The literary establishment continues to privilege work that’s just a touch removed, “refined” they would call it. Writers who tone down their anguish, their rage, their nontraditional, “deviant” choices are perceived as more skilled, more worthy of critical acclaim. This often has a lot to do with racism and sexism, and the stories we are “allowed” to tell as people of color.”
― Glory Edim, Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves

“Black girls could not be too confident, too loud, too smart. Fat girls could be cute but not beautiful, could be the funny sidekick or wise truth-teller in school plays, never the leading role or love interest.”
― Glory Edim, Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves

“It kept coming back to joy-- how could I live a life filled with it? And always, the answer that came back to me was "Write."

... I am here because of the indigenous people of this country, because of the enslaved people who were here before me, the young people of the civil rights movements who fought hard to get me to this moment.

My biggest responsibility is to recognize that I am part of the continuum, that I didn't just appear and start writing stuff down. I'm writing stuff down because Andre Lorde wrote stuff down, because James Baldwin wrote stuff down... and all the people who came before me -- set the stage for my work. I have to keep all of that in my heart as I move through the world, not only for the deep respect I have for them, but also for my own strength.

So my advice to other young writers: Read widely. Study other writers. Be thoughtful, Then go out and do the work of changing the form, finding your own voice, and saying what you need to say. Be fearless. And care.

The fact that young people continue to rise brings me such joy. They are where I look to find my hope.

-- "Continue to Rise: A Conversation with Jacqueline Woodson”
― Glory Edim, Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves

“Dreaming is impossible without myths. If we ll latch onto those of others -- even if don't have enough myths of our own, we'll latch onto those of others -- even if those myths make us believe terrible or false things about ourselves... Call it superego, call it common sense, call it pragmatism, call it learned helplessness, but the mind craves boundaries. Depending on the myths we believe in, those boundaries can be magnificently vast or crushingly tight.

Throughout my life as I've sought to become a published writer of speculative fiction, my strongest detractors and discouragers have been other African Americans...

Having swallowed these ideas, people regurgitate them at me at nearly every turn. And for a time, I swallowed them, too...

Myths tell us what those like us have done, can do, should do. Without myths to lead the way, we hesitate to leap forward. Listen to the wrong myths, and we might even go back a few steps...

Because Star Trek takes place five hundred years from now, supposedly long after humanity has transcended racism, sexism, etc. But there's still only one black person on the crew, and she's the receptionist.

This is disingenuous. I know now what I did not understand then: That most science fiction doesn't realistically depict the future; it reflects the present in which it is written. So for the 1960s, Uhura's presence was groundbreaking - and her marginalization was to be expected. But I wasn't watching the show in the 1960s. I was watching it in the 1980s... I was watching it as a tween/teen girl who'd grown up being told that she could do anything if she only put her mind to it, and I looked to science fiction to provide me with useful myths about my future: who I might become, what was possible, how far I and my descendants might go...

In the future, as in the present, as in the past, black people will build many new worlds.
This is true. I will make it so. And you will help me.”
― Glory Edim, Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves

“I understood that the United States was majority white in the same way that I understood that the Earth was seventy percent water. I knew it, but standing on dry land, I couldn’t quite believe it.”
― Glory Edim, Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves

“Our work is making sure that our stories are told and told true. Our work is making sure our artistry is cultivated and expressed, shared and appreciated. Our work is honoring our genius when no one else does. Our work is refusing to surrender, refusing to be silenced, refusing to be rendered simplistically. Our work seems endless, and probably is. But our stories are at the core of our identity, and if they don’t exist, in some critical way we won’t exist, either. We won’t have the glue that holds us together, and gives us perspective on our lives through the lens of history. We have no way to join the Sisterhood.”
― Glory Edim, Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves

“A professor once told me that the characters we create are always based on the people who are closest to us, the people who are in our world. We are always only writing about them, even if we’re seemingly writing about something foreign or more expansive.”
― Glory Edim, Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves

“I hope my work is catalytic and inspires readers to reflect deeply on their experiences, and in turn, live with greater self-awareness and courage.”
― Glory Edim, Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves

“I am still assessing what it means to be a person in this country that reeks of its legacy of not recognizing those who looked like me as citizens”
― Glory Edim, Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves

“Citizen is one of those books that reminds me that black life is often like walking a balance beam: It requires strategy and concentration for stability is so fleeting.”
― Glory Edim, Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves

“Black women happen to be the most educated group in America (so far), and every day, there are more and more of us being told we can’t and defiantly showing the world that we can and we will.”
― Glory Edim, Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves

“He (her father) made me believe there were stories all around us, and that he was able to just snatch them right out the air.”
― Glory Edim, Gather Me: A Memoir in Praise of the Books That Saved Me

“come celebrate with me that everyday something has tried to kill me and has failed.”
― Glory Edim, Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves

“Zora validated the intelligence and creativity of ordinary, easily overlooked, and forgotten people, and this touched the students deeply.”
― Glory Edim, Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves

“It’s so important that these perspectives are included in the discourse of American and global culture. If we don’t unearth these stories, if we don’t inject them into every corner of the conversation, vast swaths of the population will continue to be ignored, erased, unconsidered; the work of the pioneers laboring quietly to change the world, to enlarge our understanding through their choices and deeds, will be lost.”
― Glory Edim, Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves

“great dramas were at the cruxes of their lives.”
― Glory Edim, Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves

“I still and will always believe that representation of all kinds is essential. My work—the memoirs, anthologies, novels, television pilots, magazine articles—is just one long attempt to make sure that people from different backgrounds are seen and heard, especially people who are in some practical way challenging the status quo, and offering different interpretations of what it means to be a human being right now.”
― Glory Edim, Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves

“With really good literature you’re allowed to take multiple journeys as your perspective shifts over time. It continues to resonate, as you find different ways of entering and engaging with the narrative.”
― Glory Edim, Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves

“... I hope I can communicate with people nonetheless. My writing is an attempt to join an ongoing human conversation that starts with the questions: Why are we here? What do we want? And how can we contribute? I hope that by writing some of the stories I know, people will hear some of their own voices in my characters.

-- "Witnessing Hope" by Stephanie Powell Watts”
― Glory Edim, Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves

“Zora did not teach me how to write. She taught me how to live, how to laugh, and how to love. Her canon is a master class in the art of living.”
― Glory Edim, Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves

“Rankine strips life to the simplest denominator to draw attention to the central issue: How does one live in the midst of being wiped out?”
― Glory Edim, Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves

“We seemed to be easily neglected, used, and abused but also made to cater to and clean up after men who hurt us but take little to no responsibility for their actions.”
― Glory Edim, Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves

“Citizen is one of those books that reminds me that black life is often like walking a balance beam: It requires strategy and concentration for stability is so fleeting.

-- "To Be a Citizen" by Morgan Jerkins”
― Glory Edim, Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves

“Even as I wrote my debut, I felt inspired and strengthened to magnify the world’s interruptions, those double takes in black women’s lives that deserve further introspection and analysis, no matter how messy or contradictory they may be.”
― Glory Edim, Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves

“Dreaming is impossible without myths. If we ll latch onto those of others -- even if don't have enough myths of our own, we'll latch onto those of others -- even if those myths make us believe terrible or false things about ourselves... Call it superego, call it common sense, call it pragmatism, call it learned helplessness, but the mind craves boundaries. Depending on the myths we believe in, those boundaries can be magnificently vast or crushingly tight.

Throughout my life as I've sought to become a published writer of speculative fiction, my strongest detractors and discouragers have been other African Americans...

Having swallowed these ideas, people regurgitate them at me at nearly every turn. And for a time, I swallowed them, too...

Myths tell us what those like us have done, can do, should do. Without myths to lead the way, we hesitate to leap forward. Listen to the wrong myths, and we might even go back a few steps...

Because Star Trek takes place five hundred years from now, supposedly long after humanity has transcended racism, sexism, etc. But there's still only one black person on the crew, and she's the receptionist.

This is disingenuous. I know now what I did not understand then: That most science fiction doesn't realistically depict the future; it reflects the present in which it is written. So for the 1960s, Uhura's presence was groundbreaking - and her marginalization was to be expected. But I wasn't watching the show in the 1960s. I was watching it in the 1980s... I was watching it as a tween/teen girl who'd grown up being told that she could do anything if she only put her mind to it, and I looked to science fiction to provide me with useful myths about my future: who I might become, what was possible, how far I and my descendants might go...

In the future, as in the present, as in the past, black people will build many new worlds.
This is true. I will make it so. And you will help me.

-- "Dreaming Awake" by N.K. Jemisin”
― Glory Edim, Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves

“I dreamed I could be Jennifer, and she could be me: pregnant with hidden strength and ability in a world bent on bending us silent and powerless.”
― Glory Edim, Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves

“(always before four o'clock, when Oprah came on. Oprah was our other religion. We never missed Oprah)”
― Glory Edim, Gather Me: A Memoir in Praise of the Books That Saved Me

“This, while explaining to the white girls why my pressed hair could not get wet in Portland's rain, while debunking the stereotypes some of them had about people who lived there, the place that was my home, was emotionally exhausting.

I spent my adolescence feeling free, loved, and beautiful at home and suffocated, interrogated, and abnormal with these girls. I learned how to contort myself - physically and emotionally - in order to fit into the confined spaces available for me. Black girls could not be too confident, too loud, too smart. Fat girls could be cute but not beautiful, could be the funny sidekick or wise truth-teller in school plays, never leading role or love interest.

There was an internal tug-of-war with my self-esteem...

These poems healed every aching part of the seven-year-old girl in me. They were confirmation that my mother and all those women who ever told me I was worth something were right.

-- "Space to Move Around In" by Renee Watson”
― Glory Edim, Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves

“For those just encountering Baldwin now, those who did not live through Jim Crow, it may be difficult to comprehend what his witness meant to us in the mid-twentieth century. When assumptions about Black inferiority were universal; when Black people were consistently treated as social pariahs and had that status confirmed by de jure and de facto segregation; when virtually every public image of Black people was a debilitating stereotype; when our humanity was routinely debated and then summarily erased, how much James Baldwin mattered was incalculable. His genius embodied the race’s genius, and he unleashed that genius on the entire world. He fought for us with his ideas and his miraculous language. He was heroic.”
― Glory Edim, Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves