Em (emblazed.words)

“I sang a song as I sprang from the womb- which is not unusual. After nine months many Kongos come like baby birds- crying and craning.”
― Agnes Gomillion, The Record Keeper

“That’s the horror, the most awful thing: to have a child the world wants to destroy and know that you’re helpless to help him. Nothing worse than that. Nothing worse.”
― Matt Ruff, Lovecraft Country

“There is a very old story, rarely told, of a wolf that runs into the ocean and becomes a whale. It is said that the two animals share a spirit.
I'd been sent a vision, though I didn't know by whom. Sila, perhaps. Or Singarti. Maybe even Ataata. I couldn't speak to them, couldn't summon them- but I could watch. I could listen. And I thought I understood their message.
The wolf is not bound to its shape. I can change form at will, transforming to a whale when it must swim in the sea.
Seeing the whale, no one would ever suspect it had once been a wolf.”
― Jordanna Max Brodsky, The Wolf in the Whale

“And why do you think the Kongo go dark skin?" she asked. She answered her own questions, pointing a convinced finger into the air. "This skin is our toil." She slapped the table beneath her. "We got this skin working this earth. We put our whole head in the dirt. Our whole body. We got it all over, real bad, see?" She held up her forearm for my observation. "We been bent to toil so long; it be a fence, and we 'bout can't get out.”
― Agnes Gomillion, The Record Keeper