Tara M. Stringfellow > Quotes

“Miriam thought her the most entitled white women she had met—uninteresting, her life so intertwined with that of her husband’s that she was no longer distinguishable as a woman.”
― Tara M. Stringfellow, Memphis

“History had awakened me to the fact that racism is the only food Americans crave.”
― Tara M. Stringfellow, Memphis

“For years in this country there was no one for black men to vent their rage on except black women. And for years black women accepted that rage—even regarded that acceptance as their unpleasant duty. But in doing so, they frequently kicked back, and they seem never to have become the “true slave” that white women see in their own history. True, the black woman did the housework, the drudgery; true, she reared the children, often alone, but she did all of that while occupying a place on the job market, a place her mate could not get or which his pride would not let him accept. And she had nothing to fall back on: not maleness, not whiteness, not ladyhood, not anything. And out of the profound desolation of her reality she may very well have invented herself. —Toni Morrison, “What the Black Woman Thinks About Women’s Lib,” The New York Times, 1971”
― Tara M. Stringfellow, Memphis

“walls shook with the laughter. Laughter that was, in and of itself, Black. Laughter that could break glass. Laughter that could uplift a family. A cacophony of Black female joy in a language private to them.”
― Tara M. Stringfellow, Memphis

“Men and death. Men and death. How on earth y'all run the world when all y'all have ever done is kill each other?”
― Tara M. Stringfellow, Memphis

“The things women do for the sake of their daughters. The things women don’t. The shame of it all. The shame of her daughter’s rape, the shame of her husband’s violence, her nephew’s psychopathy.”
― Tara M. Stringfellow, Memphis

“It's a sight, ain't it? And after all these years, I can't get used to it. Mountains. How did they even come to be? Sometimes I sit in that shop all day wondering. Don't make no sense to me how a fella can question the existence of God waking up to mountains like that every morning. All the proof I need.”
― Tara M. Stringfellow, Memphis

“Every human being on this earth needs a sibling like a sailor needs a compass.”
― Tara M. Stringfellow

“Then almost raised her hand to her left brow, still tender, covered in cheap Maybelline foundation not her shade because no drugstore ever carried her shade.”
― Tara M. Stringfellow, Memphis

“I didn’t want that, either—poverty and the shame it brings—but I was willing to risk being chronically poor the rest of my life so that I could draw. Art mattered more to me than anything else. If there was a chance I could make it work, that I might make a living off it, however meager, I had to try.”
― Tara M. Stringfellow, Memphis

“I had gotten the revenge I had waited my entire life for, and yet, I was disgusted with myself. Had I done this? Created this evil? Lord only knew. And I prayed he would forgive me. Because no matter what Derek had done to me, to others, to Memphis, that nigga's trauma could never heal mine.”
― Tara M. Stringfellow, Memphis

“The butterflies are what solidified my fascination. Small and periwinkle-blue, they danced within the canopy. The butterflies were African violets come alive. It was the finishing touch to a Southern symphony all conducted on a quarter-acre plot.”
― Tara M. Stringfellow, Memphis

“To Miss Gianna Floyd -
I wrote you a black fairytale
I understand if you not ready
to read it yet or if your mama
told you wait a bit and that
just fine this book aint going
nowhere this book gon be right here
whoever you want it
whenever you get finished playing
outside in that bright beautiful world
your daddy loved so much child,
it's just right to set this aside
Lord knows not a soul on this earth
gon blame you for being out in it --
running laughing breathing”
― Tara M. Stringfellow, Memphis

“She qualified but had refused to go on food stamps. Pride. She almost laughed out loud now. Counting Wolf, her household had grown by three humans and one canine in a single morning.”
― Tara M. Stringfellow, Memphis

“History had awakened me to the fact that racism is the only food Americans crave. Mornings in class with Mr. Harrison had taught me that Americans had reduced the world’s most elite soldiers to a single word: Jap. I had grown up hearing my father’s Marine friends, even Uncle Mazz, use Haji. I wasn’t having any of it in this house. I was prepared to deal with the fallout, the blowback of sassing an elder and kin, but—To hell with it, I thought. I wasn’t having any of that low ignorance up in my house. Especially not from him.”
― Tara M. Stringfellow, Memphis

“Stanley, why on earth you got niggers dancing in here? Even got nigger music on. And here I thought the flood was the end of the world.”
― Tara M. Stringfellow, Memphis

“If she had to serve, had to work for her bread and water, then, goddamnit, she'd serve her own.”
― Tara M. Stringfellow, Memphis

“God talks to every baby when they’re born. Every single one. But I believe He talks to some a bit longer. Whispers something only He can understand, I suppose. Some magic bestowed to certain children. You one of them. You and the whole North clan, really. Though don’t a one of y’all see it.”
― Tara M. Stringfellow, Memphis

“Now that he had arrived in the South, he told Miriam, he didn’t understand how anyone could ever leave it.”
― Tara M. Stringfellow, Memphis

“But she’d fight Satan for me, tiny fists balled up and unafraid.”
― Tara M. Stringfellow, Memphis

“The women of all shades who had come to Auntie August’s shop not for their usual presses, but for the relief of cornrows and Bantu knots and box braids. I wanted to draw Mya and the cats in the green trees. Now that school was out”
― Tara M. Stringfellow, Memphis

“All of us now seated at the kitchen booth, I held my mug and sipped my coffee, never taking a raised eyebrow off Daddy, seated across from me. As a girl, I had loved him more than I loved drawing. At fifteen, I realized head brought us nothing but pain.”
― Tara M. Stringfellow, Memphis

“Earlier that day, cleaning out the catfish entrails, Hazel had grieved her mother. Hazel knew loss. Grief was all she had left of her mother. Noting to be done about it but miss the woman. But that early evening on the front porch, Hazel came to know rage. It was not Myron's time. Nothing natural took her husbadn. No heart attack, no old age, no cancer. This white man had taken him. That and only that, became Hazel's mania.”
― Tara M. Stringfellow, Memphis

“Never knew it could be the sun itself, stretching on and on, warming us all.”
― Tara M. Stringfellow, Memphis

“But no one, not even God, could sit there and explain to me why that boy had held me down on the floor of his bedroom seven years before.”
― Tara M. Stringfellow, Memphis

“I will help you, niece. And I’ll work on your mama. Win her over. Guess I must. Because you have a gift. I think it’s high time somebody in this damn family with a gift use it.”
― Tara M. Stringfellow, Memphis

“They could not understand that smart planning and the sheer fact that humans will always need bread were the reasons Stanley’s did not have to shutter.”
― Tara M. Stringfellow, Memphis

“I never knew a smile could be another, better thing until I saw Mya’s face. Never knew it could be the sun itself, stretching on and on, warming us all.”
― Tara M. Stringfellow, Memphis

“That is what broke Miriam. Where shame met motherhood. She had snapped at her child for simply wanting to exist as a child.”
― Tara M. Stringfellow, Memphis

“Talking Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Faulkner, they agreed how none of them, not a single one of those white boys, could write a sentence as good as Zora Neale Hurston.”
― Tara M. Stringfellow, Memphis