“ A little black child fighting in her sleep against an opponent she couldn't name come morning because in the light that opponent just looked like the world around her. Intangible evil. Unspeakable unf… Yaa Gyasi
“ He knew in his body, even if he hadn’t yet put it together in his mind, that in America the worst thing you could be was a black man. Worse than dead, you were a dead man walking. Yaa Gyasi
“ We can’t go back to something we ain’t never been to in the first place. It ain’t ours anymore. This is. Yaa Gyasi
“ We are all weak most of the time,' she said finally. 'Look at the baby. Born to his mother, he learns how to eat from her, how to walk, talk, hunt, run. He does not invent new ways. He just continues… Yaa Gyasi
“ Prayer was not a sacred or holy thing. It was not spoken plainly, in Twi or English. It need not be performed on the knees or with folded palms. For Akua, prayer was a frenzied chant, a language for t… Yaa Gyasi
“ Maybe he wouldn't end up the kind of man who needed to use his body for work. Maybe he'd be a new kind of black man altogether, one who got to use his mind. Yaa Gyasi
“ As long as he lived, it would always be a pleasure and a gift to fill his hands with the weight of her flesh. Yaa Gyasi
“ This is the problem of history. We cannot know that which we were not there to see and hear and experience for ourselves. We must rely upon the words of others. Those who were there in the olden days,… Yaa Gyasi
“ The white man's god is just like the white man. He thinks he is the only god, just like the white man thinks he is the only man. But the only reason he is god instead of Nyame or Chukwu or whoever is… Yaa Gyasi
“ But if we do not like the person we have learned to be, should we just sit in front of our fufu, doing nothing? I think, James, that maybe it is possible to make a new way. Yaa Gyasi
“ Once the woman decided to get free, she had also decided to stay free... The older Jo =got, the more he understood about the woman he called Ma. The more he understood that sometimes staying free requ… Yaa Gyasi
“ We someone does wrong, whether it is you or me, whether it is mother or father, whether it is the Gold Coast man or the white man, it is like a fisherman casting a net into the water. He keeps only th… Yaa Gyasi
