Samuel > Recent Status Updates

Mistletoe alert! 🪓

Raif Efendi, what is inside this notebook 👀

My mama raised me on Soul on Ice and The Autobiography of Malcolm X; the lyrical swagger and intellectual prowess flowed from Black Panthers and Black scholars with such ease.

“The pastor said something along the lines of slavery being bad but also really helpful—a blessing—for the economic infrastructure of white people.”

I remember this, felt like a real life boondocks episode 😭

Toni Morrison put it in earthier tones when she wrote in Song of Solomon, “You wanna fly, you got to give up the $*!t that weighs you down.”

“I have all these weird early memories. I remember my parents reading Ulysses out loud to each other in bed, in this really cool way, holding hands and both lovin' something really fiercely.”

“Our city slogan used to be ‘the city that reads,’ and people changed it to ‘the city that breeds’ because we had such a high teen-pregnancy rate,”

"I'm glad to see a young person who still enjoys reading good books," she would say. "Nowadays no one seems to want to read anything worthwhile any more."

to love is to die. And, as Sylvia Path said, dying is an art.

“Because I can't live like this, in this pain anymore? I didn't want to be a strong Black woman. I didn't want to be Dear Mama.”

"He lifted his hand and I flinched. And I hated myself for being so weak."

“I paid dearly for being a bitch," she tells me. "I confused anger with strength and ran everybody off. At least that's what Pac used to tell me."
Afeni imitates Tupac: "My mother is being so manly?' He used to tell people that shit and I dealt with that until the very end.

“I first saw the famous picture of Emmett Till, the fourteen-year-old boy lynched in Mississippi for talking to a white woman. Jet magazine printed the photograph of Emmett in his casket. His face was grotesque, from having been beaten and shot in the head and thrown in the river. Kids in the neighborhood were passing the picture around, talking about how a boy our age got lynched.”

the price of creation is never too high. the price of living with other people always is.

“My parents protected me from a lot of things I could have been insecure about, and, most important, they provided psychological security through the power of their love.”

“Dostoevsky lined up against a wall to be shot, Sylvia with her head in the oven like a baked potato”

freshman iverson vs freshman marbury @ the garden.. and yes Spike Lee was in attendance lol
Georgetown vs Georgia tech ouuiii I wish I coulda been there live

I’m supposed to be the franchise player, and we’re in here talking about practice. I mean, listen, we’re talking about practice. Not a game! Not a game! Not a game! We’re talking about practice?!

song of the day: Common - A Song for Assata “I read this sisters story, knew that it deserved a verse”

“True, but you still have to play according to their rules or they can bind and gag you. Look at what they did to Bobby Seale.”

“there’s an old saying among motorcyclists: “you haven’t really ridden until you’ve had your first accident.” 😳

“Folks just dump they children off on you and go on ’bout they business.”

From the streets of Brooklyn to the set of Oz..

"Family is the most important thing. Don't ever forget it. But he didn't really mean it. In my father's case (and I supposed this was true of most men), the little head was thinking for the big head most of the time. And the little head didn't give two shits about family.”

“Plane into Pentagon. We need all help”

Chapter 16 - The Third Plane

“United 75, do you read New York?”

The Second Hijacking

the fig tree analogy is my life right now :/