Tristan Eagling

“There is no such thing as greatness”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun

“They say it came from Africa, carried in the screams of the enslaved; that it was the death bane of the Tainos, uttered just as one world perished and another began; that it was a demon drawn into Creation through the nightmare door that was cracked open in the Antilles. Fukú americanus, or more colloquially, fukú - generally a curse or doom of some kind; specifically the Curse and the Doom of the New World.

No matter what its name or provenance, it is believed that the arrival of Europeans on Hispaniola unleashed fukú on the world, and we've all been in the shit ever since.”
― Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

“That summer, Corbyn and his supporters pushed against a door they thought was made of reinforced steel; as things proved, it was made of cardboard.”
― Owen Jones, This Land: The Struggle for the Left

“Take a Somalian toddler. She has a 20% probability of dying before reaching the age of five. Now compare: American frontline soldiers had a mortality rate of 6.7% in the Civil War, 1.8% in World War II, and 0.5% in the Vietnam War.30 Yet we won’t hesitate to send that Somalian toddler back if it turns out her mother isn’t a “real” refugee. Back to the Somalian child-mortality front.”
― Rutger Bregman, Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There – from the presenter of the 2025 BBC ‘Moral Revolution’ Reith lectures