Ilyssa Guerra

“We love imperfect people. We can love them and not condone their actions and beliefs.”
― Angeline Boulley, Firekeeper’s Daughter

“Incarceration is a sustained, lifetime lynching, meant to discard your soul and make a shell of you in plain life. Make you into your monster self, the beast that comes out when you are forced to survive in the absence of love and safety. Never mind that most of us come broken and traumatized, we still are no longer worth our own humanity. We are a criminal. We need punishment and to be rehabilitated. We need shame and exclusion. We are not worthy of control of our own lives; we are hopeless and evil. We are not individuals or of a womb or a family. We are not absent from anywhere else; because we are here, we simply non-exist. The world is better without us. In this society we are taught our crimes are the summations of our lives and define the limits of our possibility. Our only potential is to harm and destroy.”
― Junauda Petrus, The Stars and the Blackness Between Them

“Inaction is a powerful choice”
― Angeline Boulley, Firekeeper’s Daughter

“When someone dies, everything about them becomes past tense. Except for the grief. Grief stays in the present. It’s even worse when you’re angry at the person. Not just for dying. But for how.”
― Angeline Boulley, Firekeeper's Daughter