Edward Moreta’s Reviews > A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance > Status Update

“People ask me to offer them hope, but I’d rather offer them honesty”

“I am losing faith in the idea that grief can become anything but grief”

“It is easiest to think about gentrification in terms of what once was standing and what no longer is. But I think of it more often as a replacement of people and their histories… for this, I love the hoods that still stand, no matter the cost to remain standing”

“Winning sometimes means you can opt out of whatever violence comes for you next”

“It’s easier to circle someone in an endless waltz of volume and eye contact than it is to tell them that they’ve made you very plainly sad”

“When your mark is your own, defined by rules of your own making, you build the boat wide enough for your people and whatever you need to survive. You save yourself first”

“Excellence, too, is showing up when it is easier for you not to be present, especially when one would notice you being gone”

“But the idea of this Black Excellence that I keep returning to is what a person does when faced with these alternatives. What better living is seen beyond the living currently constructed”

“And so sometimes, it is simply about alternatives. What marginalized people can do with the space we make our own until some else makes it theirs”

“Commodify into silence”