Brandon Broussard

“I struggle with this, the public grief by white people over Black Death. I have been, and am still, a victim of what my guilt can drive me to. Depending on the day, on the cause, on who I love that might be affected. There is, however, a manner in which this guilt is performed that sets me to wondering what the value of living blackness is when it rests against white outrage centered on the ending of black life. It is both essential for us to turn toward our people and ask them to do better, while also realizing that there is a very real currency that comes with being the loudest person to do it in public.”
― Hanif Abdurraqib, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us

“Too much joy, I swear, is lost in our desperation to keep it.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“There are few sins greater than the ones we commit against ourselves in the name of others. The things that push us further away from who we are, and closer to the image people demand.”
― Hanif Abdurraqib, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us

“It is jarring, what we let fear do to each other; how we invent enemies and then make them so small that we are fine with wishing them dead. How we decide what “safety” is, how ours is only ours and must be gained at all costs. How we take that long coat of fear and throw it around the shoulders of anyone who doesn’t look like us, or prays to another God.”
― Hanif Abdurraqib, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us