Emma > Recent Status Updates

“Who do we become if we don’t become Americans?” (21)

“These were only history’s henchmen. Sent to square the books and collect the dues from those who broke its laws. Impelled by feelings that were primal yet paradoxically wholly impersonal. Feelings of contempt born of inchoate, unacknowledged fear—civilization’s fear of nature, men’s fear of women, power’s fear of powerlessness. Man’s subliminal urge to destroy what he could neither subdue nor deify.”

“And once again, only the Small Things were said. The Big Things lurked unsaid inside.” (165)

“It strikes Werner just then as wondrously futile to build splendid buildings, to make music, to sing songs, to print huge books full of colorful birds in the face of the seismic, engulfing indifference of the world—what pretensions humans have! Why bother to make music when the silence and wind are so much larger? Why light lamps when the darkness will inevitably snuff them?” (364-365)

“Comma was always directed at third parties, at those who felt comfortable with the current distribution of money and medicine in the world. And the implication, of course, was that you weren’t one of those. Were you?” (24).

Blessing is that as we find ourselves in a place that God has yet to explain, may never explain, a place or life that doesn’t line up with what we had in mind, He gives us a promise like He gave to Abraham. It is the promise of Emmanuel, God with us. He will be here with us, our reward” (23).

The conversation between Celie and Shug on pages 192-197 - wow. One of the most profound things I’ve read in this book. They’re wrestling with who God is and pushing against what white patriarchal church and society has told them about Him (as Black women). I admittedly didn’t expect Shug to have such wisdom to share.

“‘Hard times’ is a phrase the English love to use, when speaking of Africa. And it is easy to forget that Africa’s ‘hard times’ were made harder by them. Millions and millions of Africans were captured and sold into slavery—you and me, Celie!…Why did they sell us? How could they have done it? And why do we still love them?” (139).

I love Nettie’s insights in this book.

“A colored person couldn’t survive in the white man’s world being ignorant. They had to know the news.” (83)