Educators From The United States

"The narrative we need is to respect all life, including all human beings. How do we build our reconnection to each other as human beings? Because that’s what’s going to transition us away from an extractive economy and solve the climate crisis."

"Favianna Rodriguez is one of the first people I met who brought up sex in a public context with no attempt at mass seduction. She was incredibly matter-of-fact about her truth that, as an artist, as an organizer, her pleasure and her freedom are part of her larger radical creative path."

"It’s bad business meddling with the devil; it makes you superstitious."

"…I had to be in a different frame of mind to be able to deal with those families who were grieving, and a lot of emotions. But the rule was that I wasn't allowed to cry or be emotional regardless of what I saw on a day-to-day basis. So if it was a baby, if it was a homicide, if there was someone who died naturally, a cute, little old lady, I wasn't allowed to cry."

"In urban culture, funeral directors have a certain level of prestige. They're right up there with preachers and politicians. They wear suits and drive Cadillacs and Lincolns. In the era of segregation, running a funeral home was one of the only ways that African-American men could legally make money and rise up…"

"[B]eing an ally means you need to be active. It’s not enough to be non-racist. You need to be anti-racist. It may not be easy, but you need to use your voice and your privilege in the moment to speak up when you see something wrong being done. Even if it is “only” a microaggression…"

"The hardest lesson that I learned is that “rejection is protection”. Rejection never feels good, but as artists I think we tend to take rejection so personally. It can cause us to doubt our work or talent. However, rejection isn’t always someone saying we don’t like your work or you’re not talented. Sometimes it’s someone else recognizing that they can’t give you what you need to fly. It’s a venue saying this is not quite the right fit for you right now. That doesn’t mean that you won’t find home for your work. That doesn’t mean that venue won’t come looking for you one day. It means you have to keep working hard until you find the perfect fit and when the time is right it will work itself out."

"Writing for young adults is writing into the realm of possibility…I always say that middle age novels are about doors closing, and young adult novels are about doors opening."

"We live in an age of internment right now…and it’s not just in the United States. These things are happening globally…Silence is complicity. It’s so important for those of us who have any kind of privilege, power or platform to always speak up. That’s the very first step to take when we see oppression in our country, when we see acts of bigotry, hatred, homophobia, xenophobia—any institutionalized prejudices."

"A child always grows away from their parents. That is the job of a parent — to give their child the tools to be independent. But for the immigrant family, there’s a different cost to it, an inevitable cultural loss that happens as the first generation gives way to the second and then the third, as this once-new nation becomes (hopefully) fully your own…"

"Youth can be a great asset. When you’re young, if you have what is called a ‘crazy’ dream, no one is going to question it...Instead, if you are sincere and willing to do the work that prepares the way for your journey, others will often be inspired by you and partner with you to help you achieve your dreams."

"Equality!’ he cried. ‘You see? Only from level ground can you grow new crops. The war taught me that all men are equal before death, black and white. And yesterday,’ he shrugged, ‘Miss Matha showed me that this equality thing probably includes the females, too."

"Stephen Hawking once said, ‘Without imperfection, neither you nor I would exist.’ Every small stray opens up a new way, an Eden of forking digressions."

"The Civil Rights Movement in the US was all about logjams and blockades. Martin Luther King is the one who said “a riot is the language of the unheard”. And the decolonisation of our country wasn’t just boycotts and speeches. It was bombing bridges, too."

"All my pieces are about resilience in the face of adversity"

"Murals are not easel paintings,” Baca said. “They’re not individual works created for simple self-expression of your opinion in a public space. To do public works means that you’re making something. A real mural is connected to the architecture in which it’s placed, connected to the people for whom it’s painted and connected to who you paint with. And when it is incredibly well done, it’s like a choreographed dance."

"…It's a very interesting position to be in as an immigrant to the United States - now a citizen - who grew up in a country where the word immigrant meant people who were coming into Zambia, not people who were leaving, fleeing as refugees to go to the West…"

"I think there was an impulse in me to write women as central to the text. Part of that is my own limitations as a writer: being able to delineate the varieties of female experience is clearly easier for someone who’s lived as a woman, and projecting myself into male characters is harder for me. It’s something I have to really work on…"

"Old like her father was old, a shaggy shambling old, an old where you'd lost the order of things and felt so sad that you simply had to embrace the loss, reassuring yourself with the lie that you hadn't really wanted all that order to begin with."

"I probably seem quite at ease now saying I’m mixed race, I’m black, I’m Zambian, but for a while that was quite torturous, quite angsty. As a young woman I wasn’t very tender or nice to myself…Now I’m older, I’m much more able to be tender and kind to the younger me that I see in the book."

"They were not kings. The empire was a frikkin sham. They were colonialists, and for that you only need brute force – nothing to boast of when you have it. Power’s just an accident that depends on the weakness of others."

"…There is no such a thing as an old poet. People are younger and older, chronologically, because of math of calendars, but spirits are young and old simultaneously. Poetry as a professional, life-long pursuit is one that offers wisdom with age, and that’s to be respected…"

"…All of my poems, to me, have always had an intonation to them, and I think that’s really part and parcel to the nature of writing poetry anyway. My poetry is different from the typical iambic pentameter. It’s not linear because it cascades and goes down the page like an escalator."

"…partly because I’m perceived as black…the idea I could look at my mother and say to her that I’m not black makes no sense. To me, blackness is just part of what the family is."

"The authority of the writer always overcomes the skepticism of the reader."

"I'm a big fan of the black woman and so I'm always looking at aspects of the black woman--what she's doing and how she does it."

"At the library I would go the shelves alphabetically. I was drawn to anyone with a female name, with a Latino or Spanish name. There were very, very few. But as a teenager I discovered African American poetry. Gwendolyn Brooks was the first. Then Phillis Wheatley. I really identified with this slave woman writing poetry to assert and affirm her humanity. Suddenly my eyes were open to history. There was a whole explosion of African-American women poets-Audre Lorde, Nikki Giovanni, June Jordan. I have a poem in my head that's going to take me years to write down. Its working title is "On Thanking Black Muses." I owe them, because poetry really changed my life, saved it."

"If I were advising someone on a writing career, the deal is this: write. If you get it published, good. If somebody pays you, better, because you have to eat, but the deal is you have to write."

"Now, as her baby wept for hunger and as she herself wept distractedly - weeping was just what she did now, who she was - Matha felt that dawning shock that comes when you look at yourself and see a person you once might have pitied"

"if science has the most perfect language just think of me as Mc2 ...one day i'm gonna grab your loveand you'll be satisfied"

"Poetry belongs everywhere, of course — but especially in the classroom…"

"(At National Black Theater performance) I was in awe of the words I witnessed that day. It was the first time that I heard the works of writers like Gwendolyn Brooks, Nikki Giovanni, Langston Hughes, Amiri Baraka. I heard poetry that was about me, that was very immediate. I connected to it in a visceral way. That experience moved me so profoundly that I went home and that night I wrote my first batch of poems. It was like the floodgates opened. That reading empowered me with a voice and gave me permission to express everything that had been festering in me for years. So I just started experimenting with language and writing all kinds of things."

"then I awoke and dug that if i dreamed natural dreams of being a natural woman doing what a woman does... i would have a revolution"

"Black love is Black wealth and they'll probably talk about my hard childhood and never understand that all the while I was quite happy"

"As a writer, one has to be willing to be wrong, willing to make mistakes. I’ve put everything on the table and accepted the fact that I may come up short. And, if (or when) I do, that’s okay."

"There is a game I must tell you of It's called Catch the Leader Lying (and knowing your sense of the absurd you will enjoy this) ... You must invent your own games and teach us old ones how to play"

"…Poetry is not a stepping-stone to fortune and fame, or Hollywood for that matter — where, if the poet where [sic] to seek that, he or she would trade their voice for that of Hollywood, or fortune and fame, and lose their use of poetry. Poetry does not compromise itself for such mundane material."

"They very often would let me paint, you know, instead of doing some of the other lessons, because I didn't speak English well enough. So I had a lot of painting. And I brought the paintings home with great pride, and my mother kept them for years, so I do know that I sort of…That was a place that I actually remember the smell of those materials and the texture of the surfaces and just, you know, kind of having this real visceral love of moving that color around -- which is, I think, you know, I still have that…"

"let's build what we become when we dream"

"Ding. The cabin lights came on...The flight attendants paced the aisles like antic tightrope walkers, with fixed smiles and mussed make-up. They were done with coddling. They snatched Naila's blankets and demanded her headset, they claimed her rubbish and chastised her tilted seat.”"

"That musical time is a way of like creating a rhythm within the piece. And it was an amazing experience for me to see how when lines, directional lines, went through forms -- how forms, if moved to fit within the ratio, to hit the points. Like in other words, if an arm flies out, it goes to the point. Suddenly there's this like visual kind of connection between the forms, and it fits like, clicks like pieces of a puzzle, right into place…"

"...as i grew and matured i became more sensible and decided i would settle down and just become a sweet inspiration"

"may i spin a poem around you come let's step into my web and dream of freedom together"

"if nature is true we shall all lose our eyes since we cannot even now distinguish the good from the evil ...i've a mind to build a new world want to play"

"...do you ever stop to think what it looked like before it was an avenue ...ever look south ...and see gazelles running playfully after the lions ...did you ever, sit down and wonder about what freedom's freedom would bring ...the , Alonquin and ... could caress the earthever think what Harlem would be like if our herbs and roots and elephant ears grew... the parrot parroting ...ever think it's possible for us to be happy"

"how do you write a poem about someone so close ...don't you already know what i feel and if you don't maybe i should check my feelings"

"they say you should fight the cold with the cold but since i never do anything right i called you"

"...how else to spend a rainy day other than with you seeking sun and stars and heavenly bodies"

"if trees could talk wonder what they'd say met an old man ...told me "girl! my hands seen more than all them books... at tuskeegee" ...met an old woman ..."sista" she called to me "...my feet seen more than yo eyes ever gonna read" ...if trees would talk wonder what they'd tell me"

"...i believe the most beautiful poem ...is your heart racing"