Unmana

Add friend
Sign in to Goodreads to learn more about Unmana.

https://unmana.substack.com

Loading...
Toni Morrison
“She left me the way people leave a hotel room. A hotel room is a place to be when you are doing something else. Of itself it is of no consequence to one's major scheme. A hotel room is convenient. But its convenience is limited to the time you need it while you are in that particular town on that particular business; you hope it is comfortable, but prefer, rather, that it be anoymous. It is not, after all, where you live.”
Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

Toni Morrison
“All of our waste which we dumped on her and which she absorbed. And all of our beauty, which was hers first and which she gave to us. All of us--all who knew her--felt so wholesome after we cleaned ourselves on her. We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness. Her simplicity decorated us, her guilt sanctified us, her pain made us glow with health, her awkwardness made us think we had a sense of humor. Her inarticulateness made us believe we were eloquent. Her poverty kept us generous. Even her waking dreams we used--to silence our own nightmares. And she let us, and thereby deserved our contempt. We honed our egos on her, padded our characters with her frailty, and yawned in the fantasy of our strength.

And fantasy it was, for we were not strong, only aggressive; we were not free, merely licensed; we were not compassionate, we were polite; not good, but well behaved. We courted death in order to call ourselves brave, and hid like thieves from life. We substituted good grammar for intellect; we switched habits to simulate maturity; we rearranged lies and called it truth, seeing in the new pattern of an old idea the Revelation and the Word.”
Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

Toni Morrison
“You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question.”
Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

Toni Morrison
“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”
Toni Morrison

37718 The Jezebel Book Network — 172 members — last activity Dec 16, 2011 11:14PM
This group is dedicated to all Jezzies who want to discuss books outside of Groupthink. Here we can share what we are currently reading, discuss what ...more
51364 Mumbai Bookworms — 787 members — last activity Jul 14, 2025 07:07AM
Calling on all the closet bookworm denizens of Mumbai who like to engage in pretty much anything dealing with a book - read, write, review, discuss - ...more
year in books
Sumedha
1,203 books | 173 friends

Tejaswini
1,758 books | 81 friends

Poonam
940 books | 29 friends

K.J. Ch...
2,645 books | 1,276 friends

T. Gree...
1,640 books | 601 friends

Indrapr...
257 books | 216 friends

Chloe N...
800 books | 59 friends

Prerna Lal
885 books | 370 friends

More friends…


Polls voted on by Unmana

Lists liked by Unmana