Erna Brodber

"not only do I want people to know the history of the underclass, but I want them to go investigate. So, engaging with my work should send you into further investigations into knowledge. So, it’s a stimulus to knowledge search. (2015)"

"…all sorts of things that don’t even look political got mixed up with the 1970s and the new politics. So, that was how, when I came here, how I viewed Mr. Manley and Woodside. Anything that was out of the current order then was now possible. As if Mr. Manley had shattered some sort of glass globe and people could go inside and take what ideas they felt like having. It was really quite revolutionary, if unstructured. (2015)"

"I don’t know that the writers are aware enough of the rural. I mean, there’s nature, they will talk about the blue skies and they’ll talk about the roses, but—my models, which are deeply embedded in the soil, I’m not sure I see anybody else doing that. Because I’m a rural child, I understand these things, I want to understand them. So my metaphors will tend to be coming out of agriculture. (2015)"

"The business of being translated—it’s an honor if people from somewhere else, another language group, another culture, want to hear what you have to say."

"My work belongs to the people who are reading it. That’s how I hold with the work going away: people have the right to put their interpretation and their meaning into it—it is in the public arena."

"…it’s not just a culture, it’s a history that needs to be preserved. There have been so many omissions in our history…that’s one of the things I set out to do: to preserve…[it] might have come from my knowledge of how people’s history gets distorted and stolen."

"Louisiana was part of my larger interest in Africa and diaspora, and the need for blacks of the diaspora, and to a certain extent of Africa, to know each other and to understand that you have to get through it together, for political purposes if nothing else…[it] was an attempt to say, “Look, we’re the same thing.” So it’s not just the preservation, it’s also the preaching"

"People read about these things in something called “history” at school, but it’s not made to relate to your real life. You hear about the slaves, and who wants to be related to the slaves? They’re not people, they’re some creature that you read about. So why would you believe it happened to your people, or anywhere near you? So even if we’re doing all these things, you are not quite sure how much of it is sticking—but it’s worth a try."

"…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."

"Reading Dr. Erna Brodber’s novel Myal (1988) is a transformative experience that unchains both truths and memories and moves you to explore what she calls the “half that’s not been told”...A paragon of cultural memory, Brodber lives truly, completely and freely as a cultural historian, sociologist, novelist, teacher, community organizer, social activist, caregiver, mother, entrepreneur, healer and chronicler."

"I think that what Erna Brodber is doing is wonderful because she's coming from that extremely spiritual dimension which is so powerful."