Chevy Shoemaker

“Grandma Baby said people look down on her because she has eight children with different men. Coloredpeople and whitepeople both look down on her for that. Slaves not supposed to have pleasurable feelings on their own; their bodies not supposed to be like that, but they have to have as many children as they can to please whoever owned them. Still, they were not supposed to have pleasure deep down. She said for me not to listen to all that. That I should always listen to my body and love it.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“Garner called and announced them men-but only on Sweet Home, and by his leave. Was he naming what he saw or creating what he did not?”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“How to have privacy without losing the little light that might want to shine on them.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“Whites might dirty her all right, but not her best thing, her beautiful, magical best thing-the part of her that was clean. No undreamable dreams about whether the headless, feetless torso hanging in the tree with a sign on it was her husband or Paul A; whether the bubbling-hot girls in the colored-school fire set by patriots included her daughter; whether a gang of whites invaded her daughter's private parts, soiled her daughter's thighs and threw her daughter out of the wagon. *She* might have to work in the slaughterhouse yard, but not her daughter.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved