“To assume the best about another is the trait that has created modern society. Those occasions when our trusting nature gets violated are tragic. But the alternative - to abandon trust as a defense against predation and deception - is worse.”
― Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know
― Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know
“I realized that if we aren’t vigilant, we can move through our entire lives feeling smaller than we actually are—by playing it safe, by unconsciously giving away our power, by dimming our radiance, by not recognizing there is always so much more waiting for us on the other side of fear.”
― More Than Enough: Claiming Space for Who You Are
― More Than Enough: Claiming Space for Who You Are
“As Naomi Wolf puts it, “A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience.” Thin bodies are the bodies of women who behave themselves.”
― Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle
― Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle
“I eat white-lady tears for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”
― Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower
― Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower
“All of these fanatics were white. They took slavery as a personal insult or affront, a stain upon their name. They had seen women carried off to fancy, or watched as a father was stripped and beaten in front of his child, or seen whole families pinned like hogs into rail-cars, steam-boats, and jails. Slavery humiliated them, because it offended a basic sense of goodness that they believed themselves to possess. And when their cousins perpetrated the base practice, it served to remind them how easily they might do the same. They scorned their barbaric brethren, but they were brethren all the same. So their opposition was a kind of vanity, a hatred of slavery that far outranked any love of the slave.”
― The Water Dancer
― The Water Dancer
Vanessa’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Vanessa’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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