James

I realized I couldn’t be made more afraid than I was, than I had been my entire life.

I was befriending my anger, learning not only how to feel it, but perhaps how to use it.

White people often spent time admiring their survival of one thing or another. I imagined it was because so often they had no need to survive, but only to live.

“We’re slaves. We’re not anywhere. Free person, he can be where he wants to be. The only place we can ever be is in slavery.”

“If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not learning.”

At that moment the power of reading made itself clear and real to me. If I could see the words, then no one could control them or what I got from them. They couldn’t even know if I was merely seeing them or reading them, sounding them out or comprehending them. It was a completely private affair and completely free and, therefore, completely subver

I hated the world that wouldn’t let me apply justice without the certain retaliation of injustice.

gave a language lesson. These were indispensable. Safe movement through the world depended on mastery of language, fluency. The young ones sat on the packed-dirt floor and I was on one of our two homemade stools. The hole in the roof pulled the smoke from the fire that burned in the middle of the shack. “Papa, why do we have to learn this?”

oppressor necessarily supposes a victim.