Nikki

“What research questions are funded, which papers are accepted for publication, and who is invited to teach courses, speak at conferences, or otherwise conduct science over time becomes science. It's a runaway train. Studies produced by members of esteemed social classes and their institutions will amass citations faster than those from outgroups, if those works are even published. If researchers and their institutions harbor social bias or explicit disdain for certain demographics, the science they produce will often contain evidence of that bias. Eventually, no matter how flawed, these highly cited works may become canon, their authors immortalized in textbooks, and their lessons taught to future generations of scientists. And when a competing idea is introduced-perhaps one that seeks to correct the initial bias—it may be seen as an affront to science itself.”
― Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian, Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature

“They had once dug the earth for yams and planted seeds and prayed for rain. Now they dug for life and planted the dead and prayed for the end.”
― Shankari Chandran, Song of the Sun God

“After tea [Nanny Ripeka] began to tell me the old photographs, which I already knew, fading on every wall. Tell me who they were and what they were to me. Then she told me of the ones before that, who were not on the walls but whom she had known. Then back before that to the ones she had never known or seen. And her voice that had been slow at the beginning and thoughtful began to chant out the ancient names coming from far back, so I could know them. I was beginning to know them because I had heard them many times before. Beginning to know, yet knowing there was more to understand.”
― Patricia Grace, Mutuwhenua : the moon sleeps

“Most of all, I am exhausted from being different. You've never had to live in a place where you're different, where you are the "other".”
― Shankari Chandran, Song of the Sun God