Erin E. Adams > Quotes

“When your name is in other people's mouths, they twist it up. They make you into something you are not. When people take you outside yourself, that is when trouble comes.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“Danger for Black girls was different. It didn’t obey the boundaries of stories. For them, it was always real.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“Your beauty is denied but replicated. Your sexuality is controlled but desired. You take up too much space, but if you are too small, you are ripped apart. Despite the wash of it, that’s one thing you can always count on whiteness to do: destroy a threat.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“One drop in this country is all it takes. Being a Black girl is inhabiting a cruel riddle: Your beauty is denied but replicated. Your sexuality is controlled but desired. You take up too much space, but if you are too small, you are ripped apart.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“Myths are as much a part of the slipstream of Black life as joy. Yes, Black folks are masters of joy. Trauma isn’t the only thing carried in DNA. Blackness, like any Golden Fleece, is both a birthright and what lies at the end of a quest.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“If there’s one thing fear can do, it’s make a beast out of a shadow. It turns us all into monsters.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“She didn’t need to be an adult to know that sad men are the most dangerous.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“Danger didn’t need a place to hide, it preferred to fester. First it would smile and bring you German chocolate cake. Then it would wait out in the open on your front porch until it felt good and ready.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“Stuck is more than a location,” she said. “It’s a state of mind.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“Everyone thinks they know what my anger looks like. They think it’s screaming and yelling and fighting. Sometimes anger is a low vibration, the coil before the spring. Sometimes it sinks inside me and paralyzes me.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“We are good Black people. Good Black folks who don’t bring up race. We don’t make a fuss; we don’t make things uncomfortable; we are calm and cool and collected at all times. Even in the face of death. I think of how I couldn’t fight back. I think of how Garrett tolerated the slaughter of the deer.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“Being blind to color only makes you blind.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“But learning, naming, and confronting what makes us afraid and uncomfortable, no matter how ugly, is key to understanding and ensuring it never happens again. Sometimes anger comes with truths like this.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“After a life of shadows, finally, in death, I am seen.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“Looking at her, I realize the story of Farrah is more exciting than the reality. Nothing in the woods made her go “mad.” The indifference of the world did that.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“Much is expected of me, my friends, my life, every second I’m here, because my life was never mine. Instead, it’s a summation of her sacrifices.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“Everyone in this town─this country─is so afraid of the other, whoever the “other” is today. If there’s one thing fear can do, it’s make a beast out of a shadow. It turns us all into monsters.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“All we have is the present. In grief I exist moment to moment. It doesn’t mean grief doesn’t visit my dreams or wrap around my body in the middle of the day. It does.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“And you had too much to drink at a wedding and lost your best friend’s kid. This is you trying to cover it up. Mel’s life looks pretty damn perfect. Beautiful home. Cute kid. Great husband. You sure you aren’t jealous?” “I refuse to answer that.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“Doubt can open a door in you for anything to walk through.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“he wants facts, I can give them to him. “Someone is taking girls. They are abducting Black girls, ripping out their hearts, and dumping them in the woods.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“Like every small-town citizen in America, my teacher believed Black people were an alien anomaly in white suburban perfection.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“Myths are as much a part of the slipstream of Black life as joy. Yes, Black folks are masters of joy. Trauma isn’t the only thing carried in DNA. Blackness, like any Golden Fleece, is both a birthright and what lies at the end of a quest. What myth lay just beyond Kayla’s fingers? The woods.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“A luxury of girlhood is being able to play on other people’s anxieties without consequence. If you make a girl cry, you must be sorry. If a girl offers you an imaginary phone, you answer it. If a girl reaches for your hand, you take it. In womanhood, all those exchanges become contingent on her ability to pay a price. Sometimes this toll is exacted with no regard for the willingness of the woman.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“People in America love to believe in freedom, even though it isn’t free. It never was. Not even for those who emblazon it across their cars, patios, and homes. The history of freedom is much older than plastic flags and banners.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“When your past exists in shadow, you seek your home any way you can.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“Just because you lost her doesn’t mean you get to blame someone else. We’re fixing the mess you made. Caroline isn’t your daughter, she isn’t your blood.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“A luxury of girlhood is being able to play on other people's anxieties without consequence. If you make a girl cry, you must be sorry. If a girl offers you an imaginary phone, you answer it. If a girl reaches for your hand, you take it. In womanhood, all those exchanges become contingent on her ability to pay a price. Sometimes this toll is exacted with no regard for the willingness of the woman.”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“You don’t need to. Not all of us want to live packed on top of one another, paying thousands of dollars to sleep in a closet, doing jobs we hate, with people we hate, where our neighbors don’t care if we live or die—I want my kid to play outside without…”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal

“What’s it like living up on the mountain where you don’t have to worry about this? Maybe all of us should move uptown, and when they start stealing white kids and eating their hearts, someone will finally give a shit!”
― Erin E. Adams, Jackal