Women From The United States

"Like Mira, Virtue’s Self possess Let her adorn your Mind For Virtue in a pleasing dress Has Charms for all Mankind Her spotless Mantle shall be shown When its blest Owner flies The Flaming Chariot make it known When Soaring to the Skies."

"Dined at Mr. Powells -- A most sinfull Feast again! Every Thing which could delight the Eye, or allure the Taste."

"Men can frighten us, other women can frighten us, and sometimes we worry so much about what frightens us that we wait to have an orgasm until we are alone. We pretend to want things we don’t want so nobody can see us not getting what we need."

"I learned that comprehending someone’s heartache is, unfortunately, very often the only way to stop condemning them…I learned that most of us wouldn’t necessarily do certain things over again—like not partake in a moment of passion—even if we know how long it might stay with us/hurt us."

"I apologise for everything…As a woman, I’ve apologised my whole life."

"…I just think there was some element of burying some stuff so that you can get on with your job and your life. I realized then that I was looking for stories that were behind the act, and I needed to find that, but I realized very quickly how difficult it was going to be. I didn’t want people who were wanting to talk, in a sense."

"I think the only responsibility that writers have is to our own truth. If that happens to merge with contemporary issues, then yes, write that truth. But what we are haunted by is not a thing we choose. And that choice is most certainly not made by the latest headlines."

"I came to understand that there are far more stories in the world than my own, and that there was a richness and a profound resilience in the lives of these women that I was working with that just astonished me. It just floored me. And witnessing that resilience, witnessing their strength, their warmth, their generosity despite horrible acts of violence perpetrated against them, I walked away from that job with a very clear idea of who I was as a writer and what I needed to write. And it hasn’t changed. It’s just a fist inside of me. It just sits there."

"My fingers are turning red, my nose is turning red, and that kind of cold, I was, of course, also unfamiliar with. And snow has always had an awe for me. The silence that takes over the world, and just. . . the absolute miracle of snow. I’ve never gotten over it, I have to confess."

"I do believe that inside each of us, inside our imaginative lives, dwells every possibility in the human journey. It is a matter of access, I suppose. And the courage to access. I think we all have the same weapons: patience, imagination, hope, and the ability to be crucified and yet resurrect. I strive to be open to all of these."

"Some praise me because I am a colored girl, and I don’t want that kind of praise…I had rather you would point out my defects, for that will teach me something."

"I was practically driven to Rome in order to obtain the opportunities for art-culture, and to find a social atmosphere where I was not constantly reminded of my color. The land of liberty had no room for a colored sculptor."

"I have strong sympathy for all women who have struggled and suffered."

"There is nothing so beautiful as the free forest. To catch a fish when you are hungry, cut the boughs of a tree, make a fire to roast it, and eat it in the open air, is the greatest of all luxuries. I would not stay a week pent up in cities, if it were not for my passion for art."

"If nothing else, fiction has empowered a lot of people in the act of resistance. The Hate U Give, I know, has birthed several young activists and I’m so happy with that, I’m so proud these young people have decided to speak up and speak out on things that concern them. There was one young lady in Texas, it started out with her deciding she was going to speak up for the book when it was challenged by the school district. And that led to her becoming an activist in her own right in other areas. So I think books can empower. Rudine Sims Bishop [the author and educator] says that books are either mirrors, windows or sliding-glass doors, and that’s important in the act of resistance. You need that mirror to see yourself, to know what you can be and know what you are. And then you need that window to see into someone else’s life so you can understand what’s happening around you in the world that you may not notice at first glance. And you need the sliding-glass door so that you can step into someone else’s life and walk in with some empathy and use that empathy to make yourself heard. So yeah, I think books play a huge role in resistance. They play a huge role in opening people’s eyes and they’re a form of activism in their own right, in the fact that they do empower people and show others the lives of people who may not be like themselves.""

"So many black kids are put in that position, so I wanted to show that there is no one way to talk black. There is a stereotype that if you sound ghetto, and you use a lot of slang, that makes you black. I wanted to show this girl who exists in these two different worlds. Which Starr is the real Starr? There are so many adults who identify with that, too. I went through it myself when I was in college…"

"Teenagers give me hope. We write them off so often. But I'm seeing a lot of things in this generation that’s coming up that gives me a lot of hope for the future. So I tell them when I'm in the old folks home, I think I can relax because I think you guys are going to do a great job."

"I'm okay with people saying “oh the language makes me uncomfortable,” but if the language is what makes you uncomfortable, consider yourself privileged. I'm more uncomfortable about the killing of unarmed black people in this country."

"I compare Bri and Starr to Biggie and Tupac…Without the beef! Tupac was very community-orientated, and that’s how Starr is. But Bri, similar to Biggie, she’s about making it, she’s about seeing her dreams come to life. She’s about trying to save her family, and there’s nothing wrong with that. So that’s where they’re different, but they’re similar in the fact that they are both powerful young women who know they have voices, and they both understand how they can use those voices to affect an entire generation."

"Political novels can be boring to read unless written effectively with the powerful tools of fiction; I was trying to do this. I want my books to be pleasurable and edifying. Though Frederick Douglass didn’t write fiction, his speeches have great narrative power because he integrates storytelling tools elegantly with his political analysis."

"(is a master class on dialogue:) Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. Really it’s a masterclass of everything. I always tell people that I am the president of the Pachinko fan club. It is one of my favorite novels of all time and gave me insight into a part of history, and a part of the world, from perspectives I had never encountered. A must read."

"My point of view of Korea is a child’s point of view. Because I left when I was seven and a half, there was an enormous amount of innocence. While I was growing up, a lot of horrible things happened politically in South Korea, and yet, I had a mother who was teaching piano at home. I remember things like getting ice cream as treats if we had some extra money, or how my father always wore a suit to the office; that’s sort of what I remember as a child. And that innocence is really nice because, now that I learned the historical aspect of what was really going on, I think, gosh, they must have been terrified in some ways. They must have been terrified sufficiently to say, “We would like to immigrate to another country and start all over again being essentially working class.”"

"“History has failed us, but no matter” serves as my thesis statement. I believe history has failed almost everybody who is ordinary in the world, not just the Korean-Japanese, who are the subject of Pachinko. I am also arguing that the discipline of history has failed. It is not that historians aren’t doing their jobs but rather that the memory of history has been reconstructed by the elite, because the overwhelming majority of ordinary people rarely leave sufficient primary documents; they do not have others recording their lives in real time. The phrase “but no matter” is a statement of defiance. It doesn’t matter that history has failed us because ordinary people have persisted anyway. This idea gives me an enormous amount of strength and hope as a writer because I am an ordinary person. Those of us who may be women of color, immigrants, or working class aren’t often meant to be people who write novels about ideas, but no matter."

"In the United States we have two competing mythologies about immigration. On the one hand, we believe that different kinds of races make up an American person. On the other, a deep nativist strain keeps resurfacing. Nevertheless, there has also been strong resistance to nativism. Frederick Douglass, for instance, called the United States a “composite nation” when he argued against the Chinese Exclusion Act [of 1882]."

"The first day in the desert felt like the longest day Salva had ever lived through. The sun was relentless and eternal: …show more content. Even breathing became an effort: Every breath Salva took seemed to drain strength rather than restore it."

"(I recommend over and over again:) The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson. I am far from the first to recommend this book but that is because it’s so extraordinary. A pure masterclass of narrative nonfiction that exists at the pinnacle of the genre. It is the book that a historical phenomenon as important as The Great Migration deserves."

"On the one hand, Wilkerson is very concerned about dehumanizing any group because it is then easy to harm individuals within that group solely because of them belonging to it. But she needs to know that her work plays into the hands of those very forces that are dehumanizing Hindus. This is happening rapidly and turning Hindus into a defenseless people that do not deserve to be treated fairly because of allegations that they are predators and oppressors. She disapproves of people becoming slaves to group think and yet, group thinking against Hinduism is precisely what her work is causing. She is also against the use of oppression to assert control but does not address that the academic harassment of Hindus on campuses is actually a form of that very oppression."

"Some of these things seem as if it’s a lot of hard work, and it is. But it’s to an end—toward a richer, deeper understanding of a phenomenon that I was seeking to bring to life…The term narrative comes from Greek for the word knowing. And I think that that’s a powerful message because it means you cannot tell a story until you know the story."

"My parents absolutely did not think of themselves as part of the Great Migration. They knew they were part of a great wave. No one really talked about it in those terms or gave it a name. I grew up surrounded by people who were from North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia -- all around me. My parents' friends were all from there. They socialized with people from there. They were quite ambitious and competitive among themselves, bragging about that they were going to put their child through Catholic school because that was going to give them a better chance at succeeding…"

"My mission is about reminding us of how much we all have in common and that the experiences and history of people of african descent in this country is not ‘African American History,’ it’s American History. The experiences African Americans have had, for example in the Great Migration is similar to those that other people have had. It’s a way to bridge the gulf in how people see themselves compared to others – which is the source of all divisions – you don’t see yourself in someone else, you have no empathy for someone else whose experience is different from yours…"

"My natural default-setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me, about my hungriness and my fatigue and my desire to just get home, and it's going to seem, for all the world, like everybody else is just in my way, and who are all these people in my way?"

"Stands of stunted trees. There was little to eat: a few fruits here and there, always either unripe or worm-rotten. Salva’s peanuts were gone by the end of the third day. After about a week, they were joined by more people—another group of Dinka and several members of a tribe called the Jur-chol. Men and women, boys and girls, old and young, walking, walking. . . . Walking to nowhere. Salva had never been so hungry. He stumbled along, somehow moving one foot ahead of the other, not noticing the ground he walked on or the forest around him or the light in the sky. Nothing was real except his hunger, once a hollow in his stomach but now a deep buzzing pain in every part of him. Usually he walked among the Dinka, but today, shuffling along in a daze, he found he had fallen a little behind. Walking next to him was a young man from the Jur-chol. Salva didn’t"

"Yes, there it is again. Come!” Buksa began walking very quickly. Salva struggled to keep up. Twice Buksa paused to listen, then kept going even faster. “What—” Salva started to ask. Buksa stopped abruptly in front of a very large tree. “Yes!” he said. “Now go call the others!” By now Salva had caught the feeling of excitement. “But what shall I tell them?” “The bird. The one I was listening to. He led me right here.” Buksa’s smile was even bigger now. “You see that?” He pointed up at the branches of the tree. “Beehive. A fine, large one.” Salva hurried off to call the rest of the group. He had heard of this, that the Jur-chol could follow the call of the bird called the honey guide! But he had never seen it done before. Honey! This night, they would feast."

"There was a big lake three days’ walk from Nya’s village. Every year when the rains stopped and the pond near the village dried up, Nya’s family moved from their home to a camp near the big lake. Nya’s family did not live by the lake all year round because of the fighting. Her tribe, the Nuer, often fought with the rival Dinka tribe over the land surrounding the lake. Men and boys were hurt and even killed when the two groups clashed. So Nya and the rest of her village lived at the lake only during the five months of the dry season, when both tribes were so busy struggling for survival that the fighting occurred far less often."

"know much about him, except that his name was Buksa. As they walked along, Buksa slowed down. Salva wondered sluggishly if they shouldn’t try to keep up a bit better. Just then Buksa stopped walking. Salva stopped, too. But he was too weak and hungry to ask why they were standing still. Buksa cocked his head and furrowed his brow, listening. They stood motionless for several moments. Salva could hear the noise of the rest of the group ahead of them, a few faint voices, birds calling somewhere in the trees. . . . He strained his ears. What was it? Jet planes? Bombs? Was the gunfire getting closer, instead of farther away? Salva’s fear began to grow until it was even stronger than his hunger. Then— “Ah.” A slow smile spread over Buksa’s face. “There. You hear?” Salva frowned and shook his head."

"And she found her voice. "Thank you," she said, and looked up at him bravely. "Thank you for bringing the water."

"Stay calm when things are hard or not going right with you. You will get through it when you persevere instead of quitting. Quitting leads to much less happiness in life than perseverance and hope."

"And one day at a time, the group made its way to Kenya. More than twelve hundred boys arrived safely. It took them a year and a half."

"To young people, I would like to say: Stay calm when things are hard or not going right with you. You will get through it when you persevere instead of quitting. Quitting leads to much less happiness in life than perseverance and hope. Salva Dut Rochester, New York 2010"

"They patched the bag again. The drilling went on."

"The bag sprang a leak. The leak had to be patched. The patch sprang a leak. The crew patched the patch. Then the bag sprang another leak. The drilling could not go on."

"Her sickness came from the water,” the nurse explained. “She should drink only good clean water. If the water is dirty, you should boil it for a count of two hundred before she drinks"

"Stay calm when things are hard or not going right with you. You will get through it when you persevere instead of quitting."

"Salva shouldered his way through the crowd until he was standing in front of the list. He raised his head slowly and began reading through the names. There it was. Salva Dut—Rochester, New York. Salva was going to New York. He was going to America!"

"More than twelve hundred boys arrived safely. It took them a year and a half."

"How could memories feel so close and so far away at the same time?"

"Quitting leads to much less happiness in life than perseverance and hope."

"He was floating with his head down, blood streaming from a bullet hole in the back of his neck."

"If he were older and stronger, would he have given water to those men? Or would he, like most of the group, have kept his water for himself?"

"Reading for writers is like training for athletes."