Martha

“But you are a black boy, and you must be responsible for your body in a way that other boys cannot know. Indeed, you much be responsible for the worst actions of other black bodies, which, somehow, will always be assigned to you. And you must be responsible for the bodies of the powerful- the policeman who cracks you with a nightstick will quickly find his excuse in your furtive movements. And this is not reducible to just you- the women around you must b responsible for their bodies in a way that you will never know. You have to make your peace with the chaos, but you cannot lie. You cannot forget how much they took from us and how they transfigured our very bodies into sugar, tobacco, cotton, and gold.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates

“To identify a person as a Southerner suggests not only that her history is inescapable and formative but that it is also impossibly present. Southerners live uneasily at the nexus between myth and reality, watching the mishmash amalgam of sorrow, humility, honor, graciousness, and renegade defiance play out against a backdrop of profligate physical beauty.”
― Sally Mann, Deep South

“I'm not happy," Rósza said.
"Why not?"
"I don't know."
"Are you worried about school?"
"No."
"Then why?"
"Because I'm alone."
I felt a wave of exasperation and despair. Was that what all of life was going to be like - you had to be sad when you didn't have a boyfriend?”
― Elif Batuman, The Idiot

“And I saw that what divided me from the world was not anything intrinsic to us but the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named us matters more than anything we could ever actually do. In America, the injury is not in being born with darker skin, with fuller lips, with a broader nose, but in everything that happens after.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me