Lisa Findley

“Mammy-savers regularly peeped out at her from the faces of some white women for whom she worked, and lately, in this age of the touchy-feely model of manhood, an occasional white man. It happened when an employer was struck by family disaster or grew too compulsive about owning everything, too overwrought, or downright frightened by who and what they were. She never ceased to be amazed at how many people longed for Aunt Jemima.”
― Barbara Neely, Blanche on the Lam

“She knew from other places she'd worked that rich people liked owning things made by different kinds of people--Africans, Eskimos, Native Americans. It didn't seem to matter what the object looked like, or to what gory purpose it might have been put, as long as it had belonged to some other people first, and as long ago as possible.”
― Barbara Neely, Blanche on the Lam

“Despair is paralysis. It robs us of agency. It blinds us to our own power and the power of the earth… Restoration is a powerful antidote to despair. Restoration offers concrete means by which humans can once again enter into positive, creative relationship with the more-than-human world, meeting responsibilities that are simultaneously material and spiritual. ...

Restoration is imperative for healing the earth, but reciprocity is imperative for long-lasting, successful restoration. Like other mindful practices, ecological restoration can be viewed as an act of reciprocity in which humans exercise their caregiving responsibility for the ecosystems that sustain them. We restore the land, and the land restores us.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

“There are no fools out here, she thought, only a whole lot of ways of getting to the same place.”
― Barbara Neely, Blanche on the Lam