The spirit and soul are the body and brain, which are destructible- that is precisely why they are so precious. And the soul did not escape. The spirit did not steal away on gospel wings.
The robbery of time is not measured in lifespans but in moments.
The pursuit of knowing was freedom to me,
The last slaveholder has been dead for a very long time. The last soldier to endure Valley Forge has been dead much longer. To proudly claim the veteran and disown the slaveholder is patriotism a la c...
The galaxy belonged to them, and as terror was communicated to our children, I saw mastery communicated to theirs.
The fact of Barack Obama, of Michelle Obama, changed our lives. Their very existence opened a market. It is important to say this, to say it in this ugly, inelegant way. It is important to remember th...
The changes [in my life] have taught me how to best exploit that singular gift of study, to question what I see, then to question what I see after that, because the questions matter as much, perhaps m...
The Dream thrives on generalization, on limiting the number of possible questions, on privileging immediate answers.
The Dream smells like peppermint but tastes like strawberry shortcake.
So there was nothing new in the suddenly transracial spirit that saw the country, in 2008, reaching for the best part of itself. It had done so before—and then promptly retrenched in the worst part of...
So I feared not just the violence of this world but the rules designed to protect you from it, the rules that would have you contort your body to address the block, and contort again to be taken serio...
She compared America to Rome. She said she thought the glory days of this country had long ago passed, and even those glory days were sullied: They had been built on the bodies of others. And we can’t...
Serious history was the West, and the West was white.
My reasons for writing had to be my own, divorced from expectation.
My impulses were not filled with unfailing virtue.
Later, I would hear it in Dad’s voice—Either I can beat him, or the police. Maybe that saved me. Maybe it didn’t. All I know is, the violence rose from the fear like smoke from a fire, and I cannot sa...
It must have been around that time that I discovered an essay by Ralph Wiley in which he responded to Bellow’s quip. Tolstoy is the Tolstoy of the Zulus, wrote Wiley. Unless you find a profit in fenci...
In those days I imagined racism as a tumor that could be isolated and removed from the body of America, not as a pervasive system both native and essential to that body.
I, like every kid I knew, loved The Dukes of Hazzard. But I would have done well to think more about why two outlaws, driving a car named the General Lee, must necessarily be portrayed as just some go...
He has lost best friend to treachery, a wife to allegiances... an uncle to betrayal, still more friends to sorcery... He kept up the regal mask. But he could not always do it. No one can. I remember m...
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