efil.

“She's 68 now, and although she knows the idea of being put out to pasture is a phrase others associate with obsolescence and redundancy, for her it conjures lushes green fields filled with buttercups where she's free to roam.”
― Florence Knapp, The Names

“Haiti has suffered. The first free Black republic was punished for its valor. The debt imposed upon it in exchange for a too-meager and inconsistent political recognition has kept it beholden to France, and along with that, it has born the weight of the US empire’s strategic investments and habitual efforts at military control. Internally, color and caste continued to matter long after the French were gone. Raimond changed, but the legacy of that plantation hierarchy is felt even today.”
― Imani Perry, Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People

“blue took on particular meanings in specific contexts. On the revolutionary side, it was a color of Black self-adornment in the face of disregard. It reflected tastes retained across the oceans. And blue had an array of symbolic spiritual meanings.”
― Imani Perry, Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People

“People, especially elders, repeat stories over and over again with purpose. In the arrogance of youth, we often think they do I because they are absent-minded. Now I know they repeat themselves because they’ve whittled like down into observations that should not be forgotten. They are authoring scriptures of their own.”
― Imani Perry, Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People