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eb0c125
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People wore different kinds of chains across their lifetimes, but it wasn't hard to interpret rebellion, even when the rebels wore costumes to deny blame.
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rebellion
slavery
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Colson Whitehead |
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d6e30b3
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What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, because in the end, whatever goes down, whatever you get up to, your triumphs and transgressions, nobody actually understands what it means except for you.
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Colson Whitehead |
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fa5716a
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But who can resist the seductions of elevators these days, those stepping stones to Heaven, which make relentless verticality so alluring?
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Colson Whitehead |
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cfb23a7
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Everything in the garden is dying, that's what time of year it is. The leaves blaze and desiccate in their dying before twisting to the ground as ash.
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Colson Whitehead |
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568f27a
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They jostled one another, competed for space below as they did above, in a minuet of ruin and triumph. In the subway, down in the dark, no citizen was more significant or more decrepit than another. All were smeared into a common average of existence, the A's and the C's tumbling or rising to settle into a ruthless mediocrity. No escape.
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Colson Whitehead |
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ebe3d40
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No, Fulton was colored. She understands this luminous truth. Natchez did not lie about that: she has seen it in the man's books, made plain by her new literacy. In the last few days she has learned how to read, like a slave does, one forbidden word at a time.
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Colson Whitehead |
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63d830a
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He had met this sort of white man before, earnest and believing what came out of their mouths. The veracity of their words was another matter, but at least they believed them. The southern white man was spat from the loins of the devil and there was no way to forecast his next evil act.
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truth
white-people
south
southerners
belief
race-relations
evil
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Colson Whitehead |
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db5efa5
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Crossing a single street transformed the way people talked, determined the size and condition of the homes, the dimension and character of the dreams.
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segregation
neighborhoods
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Colson Whitehead |
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d4c4a43
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All he felt now was envy. These people had expectations. Of the world, of the future, it didn't matter--expectation was such an innovative concept to him that he couldn't help but be a bit moved by what they were saying. Whatever that was.
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Colson Whitehead |
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1a23a94
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His legs remembered the correct position for squatting down with toys. He played. He fit the round male studs into the round female grooves. He got some thinking done as he hunkered down on his fallen-sleep legs.
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Colson Whitehead |
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d2b1563
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Later he decided the specifics were not important, that the true lesson of accidents is not the how or the why, but the taken-for-granted world they exile you from.
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Colson Whitehead |
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eb3b388
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Tipple sold his success much more effectively than he did. How to get excited about, take pride in something that came so naturally? It was like being honored for breathing.
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Colson Whitehead |
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64415ba
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The Declaration [of Independence] is like a map. You trust that it's right but you only know by going out and testing it yourself.
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Colson Whitehead |
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ab0fa00
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There are instruments and human players but sometimes a fiddle or a drum make instruments of those who play them, and all are put in servitude to the song.
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Colson Whitehead |
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da75f16
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in the slow motion that is the speed of humiliation.
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Colson Whitehead |
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2fe2bfc
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It was nigh impossible to understand Howard's speech under normal circumstances. He favored a pidgin of his lost African tongue and slave talk. In the old days, her mother had told her, that half language was the voice of the plantation. They had been stolen from villages all over Africa and spoke a multitude of tongues. The words from across the ocean were beaten out of them over time. For simplicity, to erase their identities, to smother ..
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Colson Whitehead |
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a2f7a41
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It was a gorgeous and intricate delusion, Manhattan, and from crooked angles on overcast days you saw it disintegrate, were forced to consider this tenuous creature in its true nature.
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Colson Whitehead |
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3e0ea40
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The land she tilled and worked had been Indian land. She knew the white men bragged about the efficiency of the massacres, where they killed women and babies, and strangled their futures in the crib. Stolen babies working stolen land. It was an engine that did not stop, its hungry boiler fed with blood.
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killing
slavery
american-history
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Colson Whitehead |
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5e935e4
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Somewhere, years ago, she had stepped off the path of life and could no longer find her way back to the family of people.
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Colson Whitehead |
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1ff9e3c
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The I-Remember-Whensters lumbered in with their musty catalogues of the bygone, dragging IVs of distilled nostalgia behind them on creaky wheels,
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Colson Whitehead |
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94e1528
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All men are created equal, unless we decide you are not a man.
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Colson Whitehead |
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9eb63ca
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She is alone with an unattended desk light whose electricity is an expenditure waiting to be itemized and eliminated in the next budget of Lift magazine, Covering the Elevator Industry for Thirty Years.
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Colson Whitehead |
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cda2b46
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Resentment was the hinge of her personality.
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personality
personality-traits
resentment
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Colson Whitehead |
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aeee981
|
There was one moment of intersection, when the topic of hate-watching came up. "Why do you watch TV shows--and keep watching them--if you don't like them?" Terrence asked. Simple: Some days, all you have is gazing upon horror, and the small comfort of being surprised that it is not yours."
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television
tv-shows
tv
horror
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Colson Whitehead |
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e06d0a6
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It didn't make no sense until it made the only sense.
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Colson Whitehead |
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565e1c1
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You are a soulless monster whose fright mask is incapable of capturing human expressions.
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poker-face
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Colson Whitehead |
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f7f10f5
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If it is true for you, it is true for someone else, and you are no longer alone.
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Colson Whitehead |
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188b298
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She was a stray after all. A stray not only in its plantation meaning-orphaned, with no one to look after her-but in every other sphere as well. Somewhere, years ago, she had stepped off the path of life and could no longer find her way back to the family of people.
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stray
isolation
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Colson Whitehead |
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ce1c383
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Live every minute as if you are late for the last train.
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Colson Whitehead |
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3ceace9
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Perhaps Nickel was the very afterlife that awaited him, with a White House down the hill and an eternity of oatmeal and an infinite brotherhood of broken boys.
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Colson Whitehead |
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882a538
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Stolen bodies working stolen land. It was an engine that did not stop, its hungry boiler fed with blood. With the surgeries that Dr. Stevens described, Cora thought, the whites had begun stealing futures in earnest. Cut you open and rip them out, dripping. Because that's what you do when you take away someone's babies - steal their future. Torture them as much as you can when they are on this earth, then take away the hope that one day thei..
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Colson Whitehead |
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2c7b0d6
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Nowdays, Rosie the Rivetere was a former soccer mom who had just opened her own catering business when Last Night came down and her husband and kids were eaten by a parking attendant at the local megamall's discount- appliance emporium.
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rosie-the-rivetere
zone-one-a-novel
zombie
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Colson Whitehead |
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7984281
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This isn't going to un-fuck itself.
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Colson Whitehead |
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57cdd59
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She wondered why there were only two kinds of weather: hardship in the morning, and tribulation at night.
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Colson Whitehead |
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ca282fd
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I have a good poker face because I am half dead inside.
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Colson Whitehead |
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ee1c529
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Well, imagine you are alone in a room....Are you the best, most special person in the room right now? Yes. That's the gift of being alone.
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Colson Whitehead |
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57d0af3
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In death the negro became a human being. Only then was he the white man's equal. On
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Colson Whitehead |
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98f564f
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At intersections and crowded areas between sedans and trucks the gutter reflected the bitter pastels of metropolitan neon, rainbows hacked down to earth and dirt.
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Colson Whitehead |
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6a7de90
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Then it comes, always--the overseer's cry, the call to work, the shadow of the master, the reminder that she is only a human being for a tiny moment across the eternity of her servitude. The
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Colson Whitehead |
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de778da
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Pick your fights like you pick your nose: with complete awareness of where you are.
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Colson Whitehead |
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d31860d
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Slavery is a sin when whites were put to the yoke, but not the African. All men are created equal, unless we decide you are not a man. Under
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Colson Whitehead |
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974417d
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If you want to see what this nation is all about, I always say, you have to ride the rails. Look outside as you speed through, and you'll find the true face of America.' He slapped the wall of the boxcar as a signal. The train lurched forward.
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Colson Whitehead |
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b17667e
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One day a pickaninny was happy and the next the light was gone from them; in between they had been introduced to a new reality of bondage.
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Colson Whitehead |
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745d475
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The plastic-covered notebooks were candy-colored and palm-size, brimming with the characters and arcana of a prosperous and long-standing children's entertainment combine. The creation myth of the product line concerned the adventures of a clever, effeminate armadillo and his cohort of resourceful desert critters.
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Colson Whitehead |