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b8e1c62
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the reminder that she is only a human being for a tiny moment across the eternity of her servitude.
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Colson Whitehead |
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46380ad
|
The man's posture said that he did not enjoy taking orders, and the insolence in his eyes was not slave insolence, an impotent pose, but a hard fact.
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Colson Whitehead |
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cbeee95
|
When the work was done, and the day's punishments, the night waited as an arena for their true loneliness and despair.
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Colson Whitehead |
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c84d796
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The white man in the book, Gulliver, roved from peril to peril, each new island a new predicament to solve before he could return home. That was the man's real trouble, not the savage and uncanny civilizations he encountered--he kept forgetting what he had. That was white people all over: Build a schoolhouse and let it rot, make a home then keep straying.
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Colson Whitehead |
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e8b866c
|
You're supposed to pass on something useful to your children.
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Colson Whitehead |
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8125b55
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True, you couldn't treat an Irishman like an African, white nigger or no.
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Colson Whitehead |
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13a3d57
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placated
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Colson Whitehead |
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1931a24
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The conflict in Europe was terrible and violent, she told her sailor, but she took exception to the name. The Great War had always been between the white and the black. It always would be.
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Colson Whitehead |
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8d49807
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You go on about reasons," Cora said, "call things by other names, as if it changes what they are. But that doesn't make them true." ...."but we have all been branded, even if you can't see it - inside, if not without."
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Colson Whitehead |
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ba21043
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Who knew what brand of mutiny his captives might cook up if they shared a common tongue.
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Colson Whitehead |
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84a927a
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All I truly know is that we rise and fall as one, one colored family living next door to one white family. We may not know the way through the forest, but we can pick each other up when we fall, and we will arrive together.
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Colson Whitehead |
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8158385
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named Tom Bird, a half-breed who took a sentimental turn
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Colson Whitehead |
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4b59aa1
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The idea was like a hunk of wood, Caesar thought, requiring human craft and ingenuity to reveal the new shape within.
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Colson Whitehead |
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64dd468
|
Her price fluctuated. When you are sold that many times, the world is teaching you to pay attention. She learned to quickly adjust to the new plantations, sorting the nigger breakers from the merely cruel, the layabouts from the hardworking, the informers from the secret-keepers.
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Colson Whitehead |
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4b99b3a
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I'm what the botanists call a hybrid," he said the first time Cora heard him speak, "A mixture of two different families. In flowers, such a concoction pleases the eye. When that amalgamation takes its shape in flesh and blood, some take great offence. In this room we recognize it for what it is - a new beauty come into the world, and it is in bloom all around us."
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lander
mixed-races
whitehead
elijah
underground
railroad
mixed-race
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Colson Whitehead |
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63b95ee
|
Liquid fire was the very blood of the earth. It was his mission to upset, mash, and draw out the metal into the useful things that made society operate: nails, horseshoes, plows, knives, guns. Chains. Working the spirit, he called it.
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Colson Whitehead |
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0d94276
|
Miss Lucy recoiled from the comparison. "If you can't see the difference between good, upstanding people and the mentally disturbed, with criminals and imbeciles, you're not the person I thought you were." I'm not the person you thought I was."
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Colson Whitehead |
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499c8b1
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It was the sound of the god of death from one of the forgotten religions, the one that got it right, upstaging the pretenders with their billions of duped faithful. Every god ever manufactured by the light of cave fires to explain the thunder or calling forth the fashionable supplications in far-flung temples was the wrong one. He had come around after all this time, preening as he toured the necropolis, his kingdom risen at last.
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zone-one
zombies
|
Colson Whitehead |
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5e074a4
|
Roger Tipple did not have a weak chin so much as a very aggressive neck.
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Colson Whitehead |
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f51927a
|
She took her hatchet. She took flint and tinder. And like her mother she dug up her yams.
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Colson Whitehead |
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14baa2d
|
Each night, with meticulous care, Homer opened his satchel and removed a set of manacles. He locked himself to the driver's seat, put the key in his pocket, and closed his eyes. Ridgeway caught Cora looking. "He says it's the only way he can sleep." Homer snored like a rich old man every night."
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Colson Whitehead |
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547fc94
|
And America, too, is a delusion, the grandest one of all. The white race believes--believes with all its heart--that it is their right to take the land. To kill Indians. Make war. Enslave their brothers
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Colson Whitehead |
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e867fa8
|
The iron horse still rumbled through the tunnel when she woke. Lumbly's words returned to her: "If you want to see what this nation is all about, you have to ride the rails. Look outside as you speed through, and you'll find the true face of America." It was a joke, then, from the start. There was only darkness outside the windows on her journeys, and only ever would be darkness."
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colson
cora
lumbly
whitehead
underground
railroad
|
Colson Whitehead |
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b4af709
|
He stopped hooking up with other people once he realized the first thing he did was calculate whether or not he could outrun them.
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Colson Whitehead |
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06f8fb6
|
I'm what the botanists call a hybrid," he said the first time Cora heard him speak. "A mixture of two different families. In flowers, such a concoction pleases the eye. When that amalgamation takes its shape in flesh and blood, some take great offense. In this room we recognize it for what it is--a new beauty come into the world, and it is in bloom all around us."
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Colson Whitehead |
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be97c00
|
Turner had never met a kid like Elwood before. was the word he returned to, even though the Tallahassee boy looked soft, conducted himself like a goody-goody, and had an irritating tendency to preach. Wore eyeglasses you wanted to grind underfoot like a butterfly. He talked like a white college boy, read books when he didn't have to, and mined them for uranium to power his own personal A-bomb. Still--sturdy.
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reading
books
intelligence
softness
sturdiness
nerds
|
Colson Whitehead |
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163ba2e
|
How could such a bitter thing become a means of pleasure? Everything on Valentine was the opposite. Work needn't be suffering, it could unite folks. A bright child like Chester might thrive and prosper, as Molly and her friends did. A mother raise her daughter with love and kindness. A beautiful soul like Caesar could be anything he wanted here, all of them could be: own a spread, be a schoolteacher, fight for colored rights. Even be a poet..
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freedom
indiana
valentine
|
Colson Whitehead |
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b86558a
|
When she got older, she described herself as a student of American history, attuned to the inevitable. She said that white towns had simply banded together to rid themselves of the black stronghold in their midst. That is how the European tribes operate, she said. If they can't control it, they destroy it.
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Colson Whitehead |
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e981228
|
You can argue for hours about the Apollonian and the Dionysian, but the dark wins every time so fuck the Beatles, just fuck 'em, perspective-wise.
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Colson Whitehead |
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1fb615e
|
To think of those Nickel nights where the only sounds were tears and insects, how you could sleep in a room crammed with sixty boys and still understand that you were the only person on earth. Everybody and nobody around at the same time. Here everybody was around and by some miracle you didn't want to wring their neck but give them a hug.
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Colson Whitehead |
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178fbe6
|
Over time, Elwood saw that he was always simultaneously at home in whatever scene he found himself and also seemed like he shouldn't have been there; inside and above at the same time; a part and apart. Like a tree trunk that falls across a creek--it doesn't belong and then it's never not been there, generating its own ripples in the larger current.
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Colson Whitehead |
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1801694
|
Fear drove these people, even more than cotton money.
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Colson Whitehead |
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5bb3c77
|
racial violence only becomes more vicious in its expression. It will not abate or disappear, not anytime soon,
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Colson Whitehead |
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f5bfd31
|
She threw him a bone about the movement: 'Lyndon Johnson's carrying on President Kennedy's civil rights bill. And if that good old boy is doing right, you know things is changing. Be a whole different thing when you come home, Elwood.
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Colson Whitehead |
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53b858f
|
She said that white towns had simply banded together to rid themselves of the black stronghold in their midst. That is how the European tribes operate, she said. If they can't control it, they destroy it.
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Colson Whitehead |
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7279916
|
Liberty make a body fertile," Georgina said. That, and the knowledge they will not be sold, Cora added."
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Colson Whitehead |
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bcde31f
|
Every kid had heard of Fun Town, been there or envied someone who had. In the third cut on side A, Dr. King spoke of how his daughter longed to visit the amusement park on Stewart Avenue in Atlanta. Yolanda begged her parents whenever
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Colson Whitehead |
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8ad1cda
|
life is an argument with the world over time.
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time
world
|
Colson Whitehead |
|
7008a80
|
Sometimes a workweek will grind you into sand, pulverize you into particles.
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work
weariness
|
Colson Whitehead |
|
c895821
|
Keep on the path and you will not see the ruined people, so do not stray from the path.
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people
ruined-people
|
Colson Whitehead |
|
921f389
|
all the smart men talking about Manifest Destiny. Like it's a new idea. ... It means taking what is yours, your property, whatever you decide it to be. And everyone else taking their assigned places to allow you to to take it. Whether it's red men or Africans, giving up themselves, giving of themselves, so that we can have what is rightfully ours. The French seeing aside their territorial claims. The British and the Spanish slinking away. ...
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Colson Whitehead |
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193569d
|
When trafficking in cadavers, it helped to be immune to sentimentality.
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Colson Whitehead |
|
18672f2
|
Hey, man! Hey, hold up a minute!" Like many New Yorkers, he had a crackhead alert system and turned, steeling himself."
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Colson Whitehead |
|
66fa4e3
|
America was a ghost in the darkness,
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Colson Whitehead |