Emma > Recent Status Updates

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)

Wow, this book. It shows how enslaved people might escape a plantation only to be put under new oppressive systems. They’re treated as some sort of curiosity or experiment, not autonomous human beings. Also, Cora’s job at the museum is so angering 🙄

“Truth was a changing display in a shop window, manipulated by hands when you weren’t looking, alluring and ever out of reach” (119).

“Every dream a dream of escape even when it didn’t look like it. When it was a dream of new shoes” (57).

“Fear was already in pursuit, as it had been every day on the plantation, and it matched their pace” (55).

So well-written!!

“By making a circle of themselves that separated the human spirits within from the degradation without” (28).

“Then it comes, always—the overseer’s cry, the call to work, the shadow of the master, the reminder that she is only a human being for a tiny moment across the eternity of her servitude” (29).

“And before the slave part of her caught up with the human part of her…” (34).

“Sometimes she cries because things are so beautiful and we keep messing them up. Because the world doesn’t have to be so terrifying. That’s on people, not the world.” (192)

I really thought I’d like this book but I think I might put it down…beautifully written but the emotion is just too heavy for me right now. Maybe I’ll come back to it.

“When it seems like the whole world thinks you’re bad, it’s hard to hang on to your goodness” (6).

Oh my goodness - the dufflepods chapters were so much fun! What funny characters!

“Francie wished adults would stop telling her that. Already the load of thanks in the future was weighing her down. She figured she’d have to spend the best years of her womanhood hunting up people to tell them that they were right and to thank them” (322).

The part where Aunt Sissy fakes having a baby is absolutely hilarious!

“It was a good thing that she got herself into this other school. It showed her that there were other worlds beside the world she had been born into and that these other worlds were not unattainable” (174).

Absolutely loving this book so far.

“They learned no compassion from their own anguish. Thus their suffering was wasted” (159).

“There had to be the dark and muddy waters so that the sun could have something to background its flashing glory (163).