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933ccf1
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What a world it is, Cora thought, that makes a living prison into your only haven. Was she out of bondage or in its web: how to describe the status of a runaway? Freedom was a thing that shifted as you looked at it, the way a forest is dense with trees up close but from outside, from the empty meadow, you see its true limits. Being free had nothing to do with chains or how much space you had. On the plantation, she was not free, but she mov..
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Colson Whitehead |
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1e8348e
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IF THEY THINK those two words New York will fix them, who are we to say otherwise.
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Colson Whitehead |
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0a2e195
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The only currency to satisfy the debt was their survival and to help others when circumstances permitted.
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Colson Whitehead |
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c28c026
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You have to stand up real close to the posters to see the swirls, and even then they're easy to miss: Lila Mae had to have Jimmy point them out to her. Horns, boiling cysts, the occasional cussword inked in across Chancre's slat teeth--they add up after a while, somehow more personal and meaningful than the usual cartoons and pinups of office homesteading.
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Colson Whitehead |
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cfa5245
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a new wave of immigrants would replace the Irish, fleeing a different but no less abject country, the process starting anew. The engine huffed and groaned and kept running. They had merely switched the fuel that moved the pistons. The
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Colson Whitehead |
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7a50079
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Dressed, she's in front of the mirror. Armed. She puts her face on. In her case, not a matter of cosmetics, but will. How to make such a sad face hard? It took practice. Not in front of a mirror or in front of strangers, gauging her success by their expressions of horror, disgust, etc. She did it by lying in her bed, feeling and testing which muscles in her face pained under application of concerted tension. To choose the most extreme pain ..
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Colson Whitehead |
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d206349
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An elevator doesn't exist without its freight. If there's no one to get on, the elevator remains in quiescence. The elevator and the passenger need each other.
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Colson Whitehead |
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12d1ae6
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The world is mean from the start and gets meaner every day. It uses you up until you only dream of death. Mabel
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Colson Whitehead |
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40b85d8
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The publicity of the present day causes that no sooner is a discovery or an invention made than it is already improved upon and surpassed by competing efforts.
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Colson Whitehead |
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033827c
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Rumors have flourished in worse soil than this.
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Colson Whitehead |
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bef052a
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Each thing had a value and as the value changed, everything else changed also. A broken calabash was worth less than one that held its water, a hook that kept its catfish more prized than one that relinquished its bait. In America the quirk was that people were things.
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Colson Whitehead |
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5065c4b
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The tunnel pulled at her. How many hands had it required to make this place? And the tunnels beyond, wherever and how far they led? She thought of the picking, how it raced down the furrows at harvest, the African bodies working as one, as fast as their strength permitted. The vast fields burst with hundreds of thousands of white bolls, strung like stars in the sky on the clearest of clear nights. When the slaves finished, they had stripped..
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Colson Whitehead |
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4c0a414
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The first time Caesar approached Cora about running north, she said no.
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opening-lines
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Colson Whitehead |
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742e944
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Even if the adults were free of the shackles that had held them fast, bondage had stolen too much time. Only the children could take full advantage of their dreaming. If white men let them.
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Colson Whitehead |
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b24ed7b
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When you remember this moment later you will understand that I was saying goodbye even if you did not know it.
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Colson Whitehead |
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8abb4e7
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Her price fluctuated. When you are sold that many times, the world is teaching you to pay attention.
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Colson Whitehead |
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48ae9f6
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In America the quirk was that people were things. Best to cut your losses on an old man who won't survive a trip across the ocean. A young buck from strong tribal stock got customers into a froth. A slave girl squeezing out pups was like a mint, money that bred money. If you were a thing--a cart or a horse or a slave--your value determined your possibilities. She minded her place.
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Colson Whitehead |
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9aaad92
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They were treated to the same Randall hospitality, the travesties so routine and familiar that they were a kind of weather, and the ones so imaginative in their monstrousness that the mind refused to accommodate them. Sometimes such an experience bound one person to another; just as often the shame of one's powerlessness made all witnesses into enemies.
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Colson Whitehead |
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136b7a8
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In the sway of a sudden reverie among the furrows or while untangling the mysteries of an early-morning dream. In the middle of a song on a warm Sunday night. 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.
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Colson Whitehead |
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deb94ec
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Cora had heard Michael recite the Declaration of Independence back on the Randall plantation many times, his voice drifting through the village like an angry phantom. She didn't understand the words, most of them at any rate, but created equal was not lost on her. The white men who wrote it didn't understand it either, if all men did not truly mean all men. Not if they snatched away what belonged to other people, whether it was something yo..
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Colson Whitehead |
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75f8845
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After a lull in white arrests, some towns increased the rewards for turning in collaborators. Folks informed on business rivals, ancient nemeses, and neighbors, recounting old conversations where the traitors had uttered forbidden sympathies. Children tattled on their parents, taught by schoolmistresses the hallmarks of sedition.
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Colson Whitehead |
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3070306
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memory has a palette and broad brush.
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Colson Whitehead |
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5998277
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Poetry and prayer put ideas in people's heads that got them killed,
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Colson Whitehead |
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22592ea
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The way poor Michael reciting the Declaration of Independence was an echo of something that existed elsewhere. Now that she had run away and seen a bit of the country, Cora wasn't sure the document described anything real at all. America was a ghost in the darkness, like her.
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Colson Whitehead |
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ca0f26d
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The first one hundred pages were fueled by early Misfits ("Where Eagles Dare [fast version]," "Horror Business," "Hybrid Moments") and Blanck Mass ("Dead Format"). David Bowie is in every book, and I always put on Purple Rain and Daydream Nation when I write the final pages; so thanks to him and Prince and Sonic Youth."
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Colson Whitehead |
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8c02368
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It wasn't until they were moving again that Cora realized she forgot to ask where they were headed.
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Colson Whitehead |
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0133f0e
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They were exiles, but Hob provided a type of protection once they settled in. By playing up their strangeness, the way a slave simpered and acted childlike to escape a beating, they evaded the entanglements of the quarter. The walls of Hob made a fortress some nights, rescuing them from the feuds and conspiracies. White men eat you up, but sometimes colored folk eat you up, too. She
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Colson Whitehead |
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c97e20b
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of a runaway? Freedom was a thing that shifted as you looked at it, the way a forest is dense with trees up close but from outside, from the
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Colson Whitehead |
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b261e6e
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What a world it is, Cora thought, that makes a living prison into your only haven. Was she out of bondage or in its web: how to describe the status of a runaway?
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prison
runaway
slavery
status
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Colson Whitehead |
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573d1ac
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themselves that separated the human spirits within
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Colson Whitehead |
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41643e8
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the shadow of the master, the reminder that
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Colson Whitehead |
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15f65d1
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From the trunk of their scheme, choices and decisions sprouted like branches and shoots.
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slavery
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Colson Whitehead |
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e81d428
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Hipsters seek refuge in church, Our Lady of Perpetual Subculture.
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Colson Whitehead |
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71bc569
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Wow, this crappy performance art is really making me feel not so terrible about my various emotional issues.
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Colson Whitehead |
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6214f9d
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Three cheers for your rich interior life, may it serve you well come rent day.
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Colson Whitehead |
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f16a0b8
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Know your value and you know your place in the order.
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Colson Whitehead |
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27929aa
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Money was new and unpredictable and liked to go where it pleased.
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Colson Whitehead |
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4bb1e54
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Nature is a strong brand name. Everybody knew that. First thing, Nomenclature 101. Slap Natural on the package, you were golden. Those words on the package promise ease from metropolitan care, modern worries. And out here, if you opened things up, underneath the cellophane, what did you find inside? That fruit has splendid packaging, it has solid consumer awareness and is an animal favorite. Its seeds will be deposited in spoor miles away a..
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marketing
nature
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Colson Whitehead |
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87f463d
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Things are pretty much status quo with the sexual-tension friend.
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Colson Whitehead |
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ea9b41f
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They rounded up the Indians in camps, the women and children and whatever they could carry on their backs, and marched them west of the Mississippi. The Trail of Tears and Death,
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Colson Whitehead |
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6781535
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He spills his guts, it was the last sip that sent him over the edge but she has her hands full with her own loneliness, she's not about to take on his. Reach inside to muzzle the broken part of you that is now talking.
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Colson Whitehead |
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361863d
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First came the stumps of the houses that had once contained the dreams of pioneers,
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Colson Whitehead |
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8246735
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Tennessee was cursed. Initially, she assigned the devastation of Tennessee, the blaze and the disease, to justice. The whites got what they deserved for enslaving her people, for massacring another race, for stealing the very land itself. Let them burn by flame or fever, let the destruction started here roll acre by acre until the dead have been avenged. But if people received their just portion of misfortune, what had she done to bring her..
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Colson Whitehead |
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5cd925c
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Men start off good and then the world makes them mean. The world is mean from the start and gets meaner every day.
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Colson Whitehead |