Isa Dalmacio

“Thanksgiving can be both lovely reunion and implicit acceptance of genocide. A polite silence. Some of your readers are not convinced.
How dare you politicize Thanksgiving!
We are only giving thanks for how
the Indians helped the Pilgrims! But if we really want to be thankful:
Why not give back the land?
Pay reparations and land taxes?
Engage in truth and reconciliation?
Or simply remember history?”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, A Man of Two Faces

“AMERICA™ always needs new Others to provide the cheapest labor, to absorb the racism, to shame older Others for not working hard enough and not singing loud enough in the American chorus. If Pryor’s language still shocks, still violates the border of the unspeakable, then perhaps that is because he refuses the piety of polite language or censored words to describe the inherent, fundamental, obscene violence and murderousness of American life, one that has always required both the death of Others and the disremembering of those deaths.”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, A Man of Two Faces

“Yush said that Papa had a “wartime personality” Yush thought this was a good thing to have, particularly when leading a battle, as someone who needed to make tough decisions for the betterment of the group. I agreed with Yush in theory, but I was also confused. The problem with that kind of personality was that when everything was peaceful, one had to create wars to feel useful or important.”
― Prachi Gupta, They Called Us Exceptional: And Other Lies That Raised Us