Joyce Amen > Recent Status Updates

"[...] all arrogant people are weak."

"The auction block is the platform on which I entered the Civilized world. Nothing that has happened since, from South Africa to El Salvador, indicates that the Western world has any real quarrel with slavery."

"it is a very grave matter to be forced to imitate a people for whom you know—which is the price of your performance and survival—you do not exist. It is hard to imitate a people whose existence appears, mainly, to be made tolerable by their bottomless gratitude that they are not, thank heaven, *you*." — p. 40

"Let us backtrack, and, trying to be fair, remember that the Black demand was not for integration. Integration, as we could all testify, simply by looking at the colors of our skins, had, long ago, been accomplished. (As an old Black woman said to me, standing on her porch, in Alabama: 'White people don't hate Black people—if they did, we'd all be Black.')" — p. 20

"History, I contend, is the present—we, with every breath we take, every move we make, *are* History—and what goes around, comes around." — April 2, 1985

"I love you I love you I love you" — Nikki Giovanni

"'Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow recall
My buried life, and Paris in the Spring,
I feel immeasurably at peace, and find the world
To be wonderful and youthful, after all.'"

"Thus we sit, myself
thinking how grateful I am for the moon's
perfect beauty and also, oh! how rich
it is to love the world." — "The Sweetness of Dogs" by Mary Oliver

Capricorn will do what Capricorn does best. #December25 #December28 #January15 #January18 #January19

I have the right to defend myself too, you know.