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“I knew that if my white classmates were getting beaten at home, they were not getting beaten at home because of what any black person thought of them.”

I love how the chapter, “Train” ends. “I promise to read and write as I’m told,” referring back to Laymon’s declaration that he always wrote one less half a line when he was forced to write lines as a child.

“Going from one to the other was intense, like a change in air pressure drastic enough to kill me.”

“The denial, disgust, and discomfort that characterize our reaction to claims of affection in bondage can too easily conceal a smug comfort in our own identification with slaves rather than owners. What is more, it risks turning slaves into cyphers for our modern imaginings of the self-– a being whose historical value is only realized in a relentless searching for totalized, individual autonomy.”

(Chapter 4)

“Basquiat journeyed into the heart of whiteness. White territory he named as a savage and brutal place. The journey is embarked upon with no certainty of return. Nor is there any way to know what you will find or who you will be at journey’s end.”