“For you will find, as women have found through the ages, that changing the world requires a lot of free time. Requires a lot of mobility. Requires money, and, as Virginia Woolf put it so well, “a room of one’s own,” preferably one with a key and a lock. Which means that women must be prepared to think for themselves, which means, undoubtedly, trouble with boyfriends, lovers, and husbands, which means all kinds of heartache and misery, and times when you will wonder if independence, freedom of thought, or your own work is worth it all. We must believe that it is. For the world is not good enough; we must make it better.”
― In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose
― In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose
“It had never occurred to me, though when you read the bible it is perfectly plain if you pay attention only to the words. It is the pictures in the bible that fool you. The pictures that illustrate the words. All of the people are white and so you just think all the people from the bible were white too. But really white white people lived somewhere else during those times. That’s why the bible says that Jesus Christ had hair like lamb’s wool. Lamb’s wool is not straight, Celie. It isn’t even curly.”
― The Color Purple
― The Color Purple
“Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, “It might have been.”
― Cat's Cradle
― Cat's Cradle
“I try to teach my heart not to want nothing it can't have.”
― The Color Purple
― The Color Purple
“For several years, while I searched for, found, and studied black women writers, I deliberately shut O'Connor out, feeling almost ashamed that she had reached me first. And yet, even when I no longer read her, I missed her, and realized that though the rest of America might not mind, having endured it so long, I would never be satisfied with a segregated literature. I would have to read Zora Hurston and Flannery O'Connor, Nella Larsen and Carson McCullers, Jean Toomer and William Faulkner, before I could begin to feel well read at all.”
― In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose
― In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose
Manda’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Manda’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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