Nona Williams

“Who is to say that robbing a people of its language is less violent than war?”
― Ray Gwyn Smith, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza

“There was an Indian head, the head of an Indian, the drawing of the head of a headdressed, long-haired Indian depicted, drawn by an unknown artist in 1939, broadcast until the late 1970s to American TVs everywhere after all the shows ran out. It’s called the Indian Head test pattern. If you left the TV on, you’d hear a tone at 440 hertz—the tone used to tune instruments—and you’d see that Indian, surrounded by circles that looked like sights through riflescopes. There was what looked like a bull’s-eye in the middle of the screen, with numbers like coordinates. The Indian’s head was just above the bull’s-eye, like all you’d need to do was nod up in agreement to set the sights on the target. This was just a test.”
― Tommy Orange, There There

“Genetics can certainly tell us who our closest relatives really are, and can reveal so many mysteries of our deep past. But you have far less in common with your ancestors than you may realize, and there are people in your family from whom you have inherited no genes at all, and who therefore have no meaningful genetic link to you, even though in a genealogical sense you are most definitely descended from them.”
― Adam Rutherford, A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes

“that every bodily pain has its source in the soul, every pain is an expression of distress.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night