"…you can’t assimilate until you are something. Then you have something to give other people. My position is this: the universe, the universal, is beautiful, but if you imagine the world as a set of plates piled on each other, there’s this one that’s a little skewed because of a particular history in the New World: our history, that of the descendants of the slaves, is skewed, and it is at the bottom. And if you don’t settle that one, all the others will fall and crash. So that one has to be settled, has to know itself, so that it can take its place sitting firmly with all the other plates…It will continue to run away from us. People don’t know what it’s like, being snubbed for how you look, always being seen as the sniper or whatever. How can they know, unless we stick up for ourselves and say this is who we are."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Women born in the 1940sWomen authorsNovelists from JamaicaSociologists from JamaicaWomen from Jamaica
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Erna_Brodber
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Erna Brodber
Erna Brodber (born 20 April 1940; Woodside, Jamaica), is a writer, sociologist and social activist. Her sister Velma Pollard was also a writer.
11 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Erna Brodber →
Related Quotes
"…it’s not just a culture, it’s a history that needs to be preserved. There have been so many omissions in our history…"
"not only do I want people to know the history of the underclass, but I want them to go investigate. So, engaging with…"
"…all sorts of things that don’t even look political got mixed up with the 1970s and the new politics. So, that was ho…"
"I don’t know that the writers are aware enough of the rural. I mean, there’s nature, they will talk about the blue sk…"
"The business of being translated—it’s an honor if people from somewhere else, another language group, another culture…"
"My work belongs to the people who are reading it. That’s how I hold with the work going away: people have the right t…"
"Louisiana was part of my larger interest in Africa and diaspora, and the need for blacks of the diaspora, and to a ce…"
"People read about these things in something called “history” at school, but it’s not made to relate to your real life…"
"Reading Dr. Erna Brodber’s novel Myal (1988) is a transformative experience that unchains both truths and memories an…"
"I think that what Erna Brodber is doing is wonderful because she's coming from that extremely spiritual dimension whi…"