Danté Stewart > Quotes

“Serious love. We need what Jesus called neighbor love. We need what Martin Luther King, Jr., called redemptive love. We need what Toni Morrison called self love. We need what bell hooks called committed love. We need what Kiese Laymon calls responsible love.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“Writing was a way for me to stop running and stop wounding and start healing.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“As I read the Hebrew Bible, I am struck by two main verbs that refer to waiting. One is to wait with expectation; the other is to wait in the tension of enduring. It is not passive. It is an active struggle to live in the face of despair.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“Their faith was not a destination; it was a discipline.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“To believe in the better, to believe in your future, to shout in the midst of a country on fire, to stare down lions, to shake the foundations of the empire, to make meaning in the face of death, to fail, to create, to live, and to love—this is the stuff of hope. It is not an assent to nostalgia or myths or lies. It is the audacious belief that one’s body, one’s story, one’s future does not end in this moment.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“I didn't want to feel anything. But I knew I must feel everything.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“Jesus stands as one who knew economic, political, and religious violence but also as one who formed people in the way of resistance, dignity, power, justice, and love.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“We speak. We write. We do language. That is how we heal when our bodies bend and break. That is how the world heals when it is bruised. That is how I healed.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“Rage has a way of making us stand up. Of freeing us from fear. Rage made me stop running, and it made me stop lying. Soon, rage would put my faith bath together in all the ways it was shattered.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“I felt that the only way I could make sense of my feelings was to begin to do what so many Black people before me did: write. Writing became a way for me to feel free and a way for me to feel like I wasn't crazy and a way to feel like what I was doing was contributing to the struggle. I knew that I couldn't be out on the streets and I knew that I couldn't change any legislation, but what I could do is give voice to our suffering.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“I also see people who know what it means to live with deep trauma and still love themselves enough to believe in their future.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“I began to see that being enraged becomes dangerous when it is not channel through love.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“Truth is the beginning of liberation. It is the beginning of what we really want for ourselves as humans. It is what we are encouraged to be and become in our faith traditions. It is the beginning of life. Giving up our lies so that we can really love.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“Black rage is the work of love that protests an unloving world.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“Rage liberated me from my lies and gave me the courage to see anew the preset and the future.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“to fail, to create, to live, and to love—this is the stuff of hope. It is not an assent to nostalgia or myths or lies. It is the audacious belief that one’s body, one’s story, one’s future does not end in this moment.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“Nostalgia is a powerful tool of ignorance and retrenchment of the social order.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“If there is anything exceptional about our country, it is the exceptional ways we have avoided being honest with ourselves...It is the exceptional ways the country has failed at loving us and reforming itself...It is the exceptional way the country has identified with Jesus while ironically crucifying those whom Jesus would stand with and linking arms with those whom Jesus would stand against.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“In the midst of the burning, we somehow try to liberate ourselves, again and again, showing something more deep, more honest, and more powerful than the blazing.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“Even today, white bodies with badges get paid administrative leave while Black bodies receive the reward of burned metal and hot lead,”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“Being enraged becomes dangerous when it is not channeled through love”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“And the fact that we are still here is no testament to the goodness of the country. We are not here because our country, and the people of this country, have been exceptional at becoming more loving, and more honest, and less violent. No, we are here because we refused to believe their lie that our lives don’t matter, and that we should accept our suffering, and the best parts of ourselves are what can survive whiteness and terror.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“As I read the scriptures and the history of our people, I saw rage not as just a good idea but the right of a people who have had their bodies devalued, abused, and oppressed. It is constant and it is conscious. Black rage is the work of love that protests an unloving world. It is the good news that though our society has often forgotten us, there is Someone who loves us and believes us worth fighting for.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“I wanted to believe that violence would redeem my body. I wanted to believe that I could be terrible and get away with it and get rewarded because of it and be protected by it. I guess I had learned how to be American.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“I just tried over and over again, every time I got my black coffee and mustered up some Black words on empty white pages. I tried to give us love, love that would keep us grounded through the shaking.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“But nostalgia, white nostalgia, erases people like my grandmother, who was sitting in front of me, holding on to what memories she had, what memories she wanted to forget, what memories she wanted to tell.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“When I stopped running from the pain, rage showed up. And it taught me to seek freedom.

Rage revealed to me its cousin, courage, and the ways we need both for liberation.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“She remembers how the Mississippi River was straightened to make room for houses, and for livable conditions, and better crops, and a better life. From time to time, the river floods over these places. She stops to examine one word: flooding. That is what is happening when the water comes crashing down the red Mississippi clay, filling up barren places, washing away the cracks. "It is remembering," she writes, "remembering where it used to be. All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was." It was trying to find its way home.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“saw why they insisted on saying Jesus was Black. Of course they were not talking about his skin color, though he definitely wasn’t white; they were talking about his experience, about his solidarity with the oppressed, about his universal love, about his commitment to God’s just future, about his healing of wounds, and his good news that Black life does not end in this moment but will forever be beautiful, worthy, and loved. They knew Jesus knew what it meant to live in an occupied territory, knew what it meant to be from an oppressed people, and in a place that does not care about your religion—at least not the way they practice it—but does care to remind you of its idea about your place in society. The threat that you pose to their lies. They knew Jesus knew what it was like for people who looked like him to care more about being in proximity to those in power, and he knew that those in power did not care about people that looked like him.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“At that moment, I had become sad. I had become sad because I knew that no child should have to use her lungs to scream to live and for those who look like her to breathe. I had become sad because it was a familiar story. I had become sad because I wanted to see her run and dance and play and grow up and get old and find love and find faith and find hope.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle