Elyssa Pinkard

“Why did God set it up like this?” Rachel asked. “With them as masters and us as slaves?”

“There is no God, child. There’s religion but there’s no God of theirs. Their religion tells that we will get our reward in the end. However, it apparently doesn’t say anything about their punishment. But when we’re around them, we believe in God. Oh, Lawdy Lawd, we’s be believin’. Religion is just a controlling tool they employ and adhere to when convenient.”

“There must be something,” Virgil said.

“I’m sorry, Virgil. You might be right. There might be some higher power, children, but it’s not their white God. However, the more you talk about God and Jesus and heaven and hell, the better they feel.”

The children said together, “And the better they feel, the safer we are.”
― Percival Everett, James

“America has a way of dancing with its own delusion.”
― Nikole Hannah-Jones, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story

“At that moment the power of reading made itself clear and real to me. If I could see the words, then no one could control them or what I got from them. They couldn’t even know if I was merely seeing them or reading them,”
― Percival Everett, James

“With my pencil, I wrote myself into being.”
― Percival Everett, James