pamela

“When the people we read, even if we only read them to hate them, do not engage black women as thinkers or subjects, we do not feel compelled by our dominant culture to do so either.”
― Tressie McMillan Cottom, Thick: And Other Essays

“Twitter is not especially meaningful as an example of how little engagement professionally smart people do with black women. But that is the beauty of it. When black writers are not read or black thinkers are not cited or black activists are not interviewed, we can say that it is just too hard for those who do not live, work, or learn near black people to find any. It is just so hard. But Twitter is easy. It costs nothing, in either time or money, to engage with someone who won’t move into your neighborhood or sit beside you at a dinner party or run into you at the fancy deli. When it is free to do so with little risk to one’s reputation or worldview, some of our most well-known opinion writers employed by some of the most legitimate publications do not have to engage with black women in any real capacity to retain their legitimacy.”
― Tressie McMillan Cottom, Thick: And Other Essays

“. . come celebrate / with me that everyday / something has tried to kill me / and has failed.”
― Ross Gay, Inciting Joy: Essays

“What if one could not be a public intellectual unless or until he or she had engaged or affirmatively chosen to ignore some black woman’s thoughts on edge control? What if David Brooks or some of his class compatriots like Jonathan Chait had to entertain a dozen questions about the political economy of wet and wavy before they could move on to their latest thoughts about the death of liberalism?”
― Tressie McMillan Cottom, Thick: And Other Essays