Tony Diaz

“Years later, she remembered her zombie days.... No name turned the key to her prison.... So in the land of the dead the men sang to her. The sound faded across the rows of plants. The dusty mechanism of her arms rose and fell.... At last they tried a new tune whose tune carried across the gray field. Hair as black as coal in the mine, little Liza Jane / Eyes so large and big and fine, little Liza Jane. You are beautiful. We need you. You cannot go where you are trying to go. Come back to us.... You plant a patch of cotton, I'll plant a patch of cane / I'm gonna make molasses, to sweeten Liza Jane... Sobs began to heave out of her mouth... Oh Lisa, poor gal, Oh Liza Jane / Oh Liza poor gal, she died on the trail. Liza, the sang. Lucy raised her head. Tears flowed down her face and she opened her mouth: 'I got happy,' Lucy Thompson remembered eighty years after her resurrection, 'and sang with the rest.'" - The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism”
― Edward E. Baptist

“The point is that both Hitler and Stalin held out promises of stability in order to hide their intention of creating a state of permanent instability.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

“Before the Haitian Revolution, Africans toiling in the sugar fields of Saint-Domingue spread the story of the zombi. This was a living-dead person who had been captured by white wizards. Intellect and personality fled home, but the ghost-spirit and body remained in the land of the dead, working at the will of the sorcerers-planters. Any slave could be a zombi..." - The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism”
― Edward E. Baptist

“The man who counts his blessings will not have time to count his enemies.”
― William Still