As You Wish’s Reviews > Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches > Status Update

“It is not the destiny of Black america to repeat white america’s mistakes. But we will, if we mistake the trappings of success in a sick society for the signs of a meaningful life.”

“We can learn to work and speak when we are afraid in the same way we have learned to work and speak when we are tired. For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us.”

“What gets me about the United States is that it pretends to be honest and therefore has so little room to move toward Hope.”

“The white western patriarchal ordering of things requires that we believe there is an inherent conflict between what we feel and what we think—between poetry and theory. We are easier to control when one part of ourselves is split from another, fragmented, off balance.”