Tar Baby

wanted her to settle for wifely competence when she could be almighty, to settle for fertility rather than originality, nurturing instead of building.

the humiliations of immigrant life which U.S. citizenship did not change.

Anarchic, wandering, they read about their hometowns in the pages of out-of-town newspapers.

Mama-spoiled black man, will you mature with me? Culture-bearing black woman, whose culture are you bearing?

greenhouse as a place of controlled ever-flowering life to greet death in.

although they called it architecture it was in fact elaborately built toilets, decorated toilets, toilets surrounded with and by business and enterprise in order to have something to do in between defecations since waste was the order of the day and the ordering principle of the universe. And especially the Americans who were the worst because they

More awful than the fear of danger was the fear of looking foolish

A grown woman did not need safety or its dreams. She was the safety she longed for.

I am twenty-five and this feeling is too old for me.