Walidah Imarisha > Quotes

“Our ancestors dreamed us up and then bent reality to create us.”
― Walidah Imarisha, Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements

“And for those of us from communities with historic collective trauma, we must understand that each of us is already science fiction walking around on two legs. Our ancestors dreamed us up and then bent reality to create us.”
― Walidah Imarisha, Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements

“Because many of the people who were taken by the wasting disease happened to be white, God was not a viable culprit.”
― Walidah Imarisha, Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements

“We are what we are, but it is not evil. I have lived a long time, and I’ve seen real evil, remember? People who hate because others do not fit within their idea of normal are evil. People who would hunt and hurt those who are different are evil. People who subjugate those they perceive to be weaker, in the name of their perversion of righteousness, they are evil. You look nothing like evil.” Jackie”
― Walidah Imarisha, Sycorax's Daughters

“hipsters and entrepreneurs were complicated locusts. they ate up everything in sight, but they meant well.”
― Walidah Imarisha, Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements

“While the larger white society lives in terror of liberated Blackness, of the “demons” unleashed coming after them, we know many of our spirits haunt us out of love, out of a desire for all that was unfairly stolen from them.”
― Walidah Imarisha, Sycorax's Daughters

“Together they unlocked potential in one another. They worked hard and played harder, until the work felt like play. Everything”
― Walidah Imarisha, Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements

“We Black people cannot outrun our demons. Nor should we ever want to. We will embrace them as our lost Beloveds, and listen to the songs they sing to bring us through the darkness. —Walidah”
― Walidah Imarisha, Sycorax's Daughters

“the ways Black people are portrayed as the ultimate evil to justify historically and currently our exploitation, containment, and murders; the fact that for Black people and other people of color, the history of slavery, genocide, white supremacy, and colonialism is the only true horror story, and it is one we continue to live every day; and the fact that resistance of the oppressed to these structures has always been seen as the most frightful abomination that could be birthed. Through”
― Walidah Imarisha, Sycorax's Daughters

“He turned and looked her solemnly in the eyes. “Is it too much to ask for a happy ending?” She smiled sadly. “I don’t think there are any happy endings left.”
― Walidah Imarisha, Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements

“Nature has taught me about fluid adaptability. About not only weathering storms, but using howling winds to spread seeds wide, torrential rains to nurture roots so they can grow deeper and stronger. Nature has taught me that a storm can be used to clear out branches that are dying, to let go of that which was keeping us from growing in new directions. These are lessons we need for organizing.”
― Walidah Imarisha, Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements

“She had lived in Harlem long enough to know that sending people into the criminal justice system did nothing but make them more damaged and desperate.”
― Walidah Imarisha, Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements

“Genocide." The word sounded wrong in the mouth of one so young. "What's that?"
"It's when you hate not just one person but their mother and their grandmothers and their children and everyone like them. You hate them so much, you try to destroy all of them.”
― Walidah Imarisha, Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements

“This is the time to be unrealistic in our demands for change. We are told repeatedly we need to be realistic, but that is just another method of social control.”
― Walidah Imarisha

“But there was so much injustice. As soon as one field of hatred and oppression was burned, another crop came into harvest. It never ended and Jane grew tired.”
― Walidah Imarisha, Sycorax's Daughters