Bee

“Old people used to always say, You only as old as you feel. Here I am closer to fifty than forty, but I feel older than that most days. Feel like the world is trying to pull me down back into it.”
― Jacqueline Woodson, Red at the Bone

“she will stride up to the client, shake his hand firmly (yet femininely), while looking him warmly (yet confidently) in the eye and smiling innocently, and delivering her name unto him with perfectly clipped Received Pronunciation, showing off her pretty (thank-god-they're-not-too-thick) lips coated in a discreet shade of pink, baring her perfect teeth as he adjusts to the collision between reality and expectation, and tries not to show it while she assumes control of the situation and conversation.”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

“she’s never complained about her lot, or argued with him, a sure sign she’s oppressed”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

“in that moment all the painful history of four hundred years of slavery entered my body in a way it hadn't before and I broke down and sobbed, Dominique, I sobbed and realized more than ever that the white man has a lot to answer for”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other