Sammi

“For girls, becoming women was inevitability. For boys, becoming men was ambition.”
― Kamila Shamsie, Home Fire

“Weylyn's expression shifted gears. I could tell, even before he spoke, that he had drained his mind of his own sadness, and replaced it with empathy for mine.”
― Ruth Emmie Lang, Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance

“It made sense that on the day of the Women's March, I skipped it and went to my girl's spot for a very Black brunch in Brooklyn. Watching white women take it to the streets to protest an election outcome that was a result of white women's powerful voting block, felt like an exercise in white lady tears if I ever saw one, and I knew I couldn't be trusted to act right amidst a sea of pink pussy hats and white women struggling to understand what intersectionality means.”
― Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

“When I look at myself, it's a lot of 'where is your own ambition coming from?'. And the answer is, self-loathing, and trying to earn a self that I could tolerate. Writing it down now, it feels a bit like I stumbled out of the confessional and into a crowded room. Handing over a secret everyone would have been more comfortable I keep to myself. But that was perhaps the worst slow burn realization. That self loathing could actually be productive. I internalized the belief that the more anxious I was, the faster I'd work. The worse I felt about myself, the harder I'd strive to make my work good. I strove, really, as a means of separating from myself. The worst of it is, is I couldn't exactly define what I loathed.”
― Rainesford Stauffer, All the Gold Stars: Reimagining Ambition and the Ways We Strive