Whitney W

“I believe the wound is also the place where the skin reencounters itself, asking of each end, where have you been?”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“Our responsibility is to tell you the truth. But since you were never told the truth, you will believe it a lie. Lies are more affectionate than truth and embrace with both arms.”
― Robert Jones Jr., The Prophets

“I was once foolish enough to believe knowledge would clarify, but some things so gauzed behind layers of syntax and semantics, behind days and hours, names forgotten, salvaged and shed, that simply knowing the wound exists does nothing to reveal it.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“It seems that wherever the Black body is present, whether in solitary or a multitude, whites feel threatened, perhaps by the ghosts of their own sins for which they have never atoned.”
― Robert Jones Jr., Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019