Ashley McMullen

“... But sad people aren't objects to fix. Give them space and show them you'll still love them whenever they are ready to loved.”
― Kay O'Neill, The Tea Dragon Festival

“Dene wants to tell him he'd looked up the [Gertrude Stein] quote in its original context, in her Everybody's Autobiography, and found that she was talking about the place where she'd grown up in Oakland had changed so much, that so much development had happened there, that the there of her childhood, the there there, was gone, there was no there there anymore. Dene wants to tell him it's what happened to Native people, he wants to explain that they're not the same, that Dene is Native, born and raised in Oakland, from Oakland. ... The quote is important to Dene. This there there. He hadn't read Gertrude Stein beyond the quote. But for Native people in this country, all over the Americas, it's been developed over, buried ancestral land, glass and concrete and wire and steel, unreturnable covered memory. There is no there there.”
― Tommy Orange, There There

“Their nation—America—was restless after the collapse of slavery. White supremacists were desperate for new Brown bodies to dominate; the capitalists salivated for new lands to exploit. And so began their destruction of Puerto Rico.”
― Xóchitl González, Olga Dies Dreaming

“When someone is grieving, the best thing you can do is let them heal on their own, and show them that you'll be there for them.”
― Kay O'Neill, The Tea Dragon Tapestry