Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez > Quotes

“The white people I met were well-meaning, well-read liberal folks who happened to know all the ins and outs of racism and colonialism, but somehow positioned these problems outside of themselves rather than taking ownership of them. They did not understand themselves to be part of the problem, and they did not see themselves as benefitting from these systems of oppression. Many saw themselves as strictly allies.”
― Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez, For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts: A Love Letter to Women of Color

“Give your daughters difficult names. Names that command the full use of the tongue. My name makes you want to tell me the truth. My name doesn’t allow me to trust anyone who cannot pronounce it right. —Warsan Shire”
― Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez, For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts: A Love Letter to Women of Color

“My parents accepted westernization to survive, and I have had to assimilate to potentially thrive.”
― Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez, For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts: A Love Letter to Women of Color

“I identify as Brown because I am Brown. This was not always how I identified. As a non-Black and also a non-white person, I am often prompted to pick a race category that does not include me. I am either given a white or black box to check, and I did not always understand where I belonged.”
― Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez, For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts: A Love Letter to Women of Color

“A non-white girl’s self-love is revolutionary and anyone trying to water it down needs to back right off.”
― Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez, For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts: A Love Letter to Women of Color

“And maybe I’m romanticizing some of these women I saw peripherally, but fuck it. I am in love with us, and I want a flowery, beautiful book about us that does not pull any punches and jabs hardest at those who have harmed us.”
― Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez, Tías and Primas: On Knowing and Loving the Women Who Raise Us

“I have healed through knowing, and by knowing I can move toward possible solutions.”
― Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez, For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts: A Love Letter to Women of Color

“Your parents brag about your brilliance all while exhorting you to be more like their friends’ daughters, the good obedient daughters who did what they were told.”
― Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez, For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts: A Love Letter to Women of Color

“Women of Color in America have grown up within a symphony of anguish at being silenced, at being unchosen, at knowing that when we survive, it is in spite of a whole world out there that takes for granted our lack of humanness, that hates our very existence, outside of its service. And I say “symphony” rather than “cacophony” because we have had to learn to orchestrate those furies so that they do not tear us apart. —Audre Lorde”
― Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez, For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts: A Love Letter to Women of Color

“I do not think that we should be required to give up our dignity in order to access life-changing knowledge.”
― Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez, For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts: A Love Letter to Women of Color

“Put another way: fuck their table, we are going to make our own.”
― Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez, For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts: A Love Letter to Women of Color

“So I had to go through, and admit, some other firsts: I was the first in my family to attend counseling. I was the first in my family to be vocal about my suicidal ideation. I was the first in my family to leave my husband even when he did not hit me.”
― Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez, For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts: A Love Letter to Women of Color

“I work hard, on a daily basis, to find joy despite everything that was made to take that joy away.”
― Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez, For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts: A Love Letter to Women of Color

“I come from women who, by staying, taught their sons that this was all okay, and those sons then turned against their mothers and treated them as inferior from the minute they felt like they were “men.”
― Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez, For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts: A Love Letter to Women of Color

“You belong to no one but are accountable to many.”
― Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez, For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts: A Love Letter to Women of Color

“Accessibility is about power, gatekeeping is founded on the protection of power, and to all that I say: fuck that, because information that can change lives should never be hoarded.”
― Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez, For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts: A Love Letter to Women of Color

“The assumption that some people do not have the wherewithal to save themselves implies their assumed inferiority.”
― Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez, For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts: A Love Letter to Women of Color

“The white people I met were well-meaning, well-read liberal folks who happened to know all the ins and outs of racism and colonialism, but somehow positioned these problems outside of themselves rather than taking ownership of them. They did not understand themselves to be part of the problem, and they did not see themselves as benefitting from these systems of oppression. Many was themselves as strictly allies.”
― Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez, For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts: A Love Letter to Women of Color

“Remember who you are, and the rest will come.”
― Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez, For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts: A Love Letter to Women of Color

“America was like this abusive girlfriend: she said she was here to provide opportunities across the board, but on the ground and in my life, everything felt harder to accomplish. When I failed at becoming the American Dream, I was blamed for not working hard enough. America never was America to me, because America was never the America she said she was.”
― Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez, For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts: A Love Letter to Women of Color