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d5b50c4
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And if you could make a study of the dead, Stevens thought from time to time, you could make a study of the living, and make them testify as no cadaver could.
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Colson Whitehead |
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f3388d8
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By making a circle of themselves that separated the human spirits within from the degradation without. Noble
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Colson Whitehead |
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d46680e
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the buttons of his dark blue uniform allude to an ongoing border dispute with his soft belly.
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Colson Whitehead |
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f5c6a34
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Well, imagine you are alone in a room. The lights are down low, you've got some scented candles going. Soothing New Age tunes, nothing too druid-chanty, seep out of the hi-fi to gently massage your cerebral cortex. Feel good? Are you the best, most special person in the room right now? Yes. That's the gift of being alone. Then a bozo in a CAT Diesel Power cap barges in. What's the chance that you are the best, most special person in the roo..
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Colson Whitehead |
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0c46a04
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Craftsmen and artisans created items that were brittle rumors compared with his father's iron facts.
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Colson Whitehead |
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f70b22d
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In her Georgia misery she had pictured freedom, and it had not looked like this. Freedom was a community laboring for something lovely and rare. Mingo
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Colson Whitehead |
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beba1c7
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Whoever has the better stuff wins. Sound familiar, American lackeys of late-stage capitalism?
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possessions
capitalism
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Colson Whitehead |
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28bff5f
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Optimism skipped out on the rent a while back, but the cynic in the penthouse won't leave until led out by marshals.
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Colson Whitehead |
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fa8ab2f
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Cora hoped the musicians wouldn't think them rude for their inattention. It was unlikely. Playing their music as freemen and not chattel was probably still a cherished novelty. To attack the melody without the burden of providing one of the sole comforts of their slave village. To practice their art with liberty and joy.
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Colson Whitehead |
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084e6f0
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Cora remembered Caesar's words about the men at the factory who were hunted by the plantation, carrying it here despite the miles. It lived in them. It still lived in all of them, waiting to abuse and taunt when chance presented itself.
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Colson Whitehead |
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1b4eae5
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Cora didn't know what optimistic meant. She asked the other girls that night if they were familiar with the word. None of them had heard it before. She decided that it meant trying.
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Colson Whitehead |
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237df79
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Judge not the dysfunctions of others, let ye be judged.
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Colson Whitehead |
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117beb3
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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 their..
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Colson Whitehead |
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4707035
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He was a rube, but he was no tourist.
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Colson Whitehead |
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ef78b4c
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Lesson: If you're going to view blinds as taxes, be a Republican about them.
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Colson Whitehead |
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4e974f9
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Other patrollers carried guns and eagerly cut down any rascal dumb enough to flee,
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Colson Whitehead |
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a672ec5
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No slave had ever keeled over dead at a spinning wheel or been butchered for a tangle. But nobody wanted to speak on the true disposition of the world. And no one wanted to hear it.
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Colson Whitehead |
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79c8460
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His trick: Don't speculate where the slave is headed next. Concentrate instead on the idea that he is running away from
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Colson Whitehead |
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08d3829
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The underground railroad maintained no lines to speak of. The decoys in negro dress, the secret codes in the back pages of newspapers. They openly bragged of their subversion, hustling a slave out the back door as the slave catchers broke down the front. It was a criminal conspiracy devoted to theft of property, and Ridgeway suffered their brazenness as a personal slur.
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Colson Whitehead |
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216d550
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venturing now or after nightfall. Cora thought better
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Colson Whitehead |
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a649298
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Verkligheten var en foranderlig skyltning i ett butiksfonster, manipulerad av hander nar man inte sag, lockande och standigt utom rackhall.
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Colson Whitehead |
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30d14fe
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Stulna kroppar som arbetade pa stulen mark.
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Colson Whitehead |
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8b18e31
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When the slaves finished, they had stripped the fields of their color. It was a magnificent operation, from seed to bale, but no one of them could be prideful of their labor. It had been stolen from them. Bled from them.
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slavery
u-s-history
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Colson Whitehead |
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ee8eb6c
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For det ar vad man gor nar man tar nagons barn - stjal deras framtid.
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Colson Whitehead |
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799644b
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Och att de sedan, efter allt varlden hade lart dem, inte kande igen bojorna nar de fastes vid deras hander och fotter. South Carolinas bojor var av ett nytt slag - nycklarna och tillhallarna praglades av lokala syften - men fungerade anda som bojor. De hade inta alls kommit sarskilt langt.
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Colson Whitehead |
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f9ab03b
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Frihet var nagot som forandrades nar man sag pa den, liksom en skog ar tat av trad pa nara hall, men utifran, fran den tomma angen, ser man dess sanna granser. Att vara fri hade inget att gora med bojor eller hur mycket utrymme man hade. Pa plantagen var hon inte fri, men hon rorde sig obehindrat pa dess marker, smakade pa luften och foljde sommarens stjarnor. Plantagen var stor i sin litenhet. Har var hon fri fran sin agare men smog omkrin..
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Colson Whitehead |
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cd573af
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I was a skinny guy, but I was morbidly obese with doom.
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Colson Whitehead |
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e4b620b
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Att se bojor pa en annan manniska och vara glad att de inte ar ens egna - sadan var den lycka som stod fargade till buds, de som definierades av hur mycket varre det narsomhelst kunde blir.
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Colson Whitehead |
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886e218
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All men are created equal, unless we decide that you are not a man.
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Colson Whitehead |
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a61f89c
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When black blood was money, the savvy businessman knew to open the vein.
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Colson Whitehead |
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65323b1
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High-minded idiocy pitted against the power of coin.
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Colson Whitehead |
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9cd62b6
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The words from across the ocean were beaten out of them over time. For simplicity, to erase their identities, to smother uprisings.
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Colson Whitehead |
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bede42b
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She didn't agree with the popular arguments for slavery but saw it as a necessary evil given the obvious intellectual deficiencies of the African tribe. To free them from bondage all at once would be disastrous--how would they manage their affairs without a careful and patient eye to guide them?
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Colson Whitehead |
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3ae09b4
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Antislavery literature was illegal in this part of the nation. Abolitionists and sympathizers who came down to Georgia and Florida were run off, flogged and abused by mobs, tarred and feathered. Methodists and their inanities had no place in the bosom of King Cotton. The planters did not abide contagion.
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Colson Whitehead |
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c857350
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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." ...."It's true though, your complaint. We come up with all sorts of fancy talk to hide things." --
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Colson Whitehead |
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d5408da
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but we have all been branded, even if you can't see it - inside, if not without.
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struggle
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Colson Whitehead |
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43d69a6
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them from the ruthless mechanism of the world.
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Colson Whitehead |
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a52bc72
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The cotton gin meant bigger cotton yields and the iron tools to harvest it, iron horseshoes for the horses tugging the wagons with iron rims and parts that took it to market. More slaves and the iron to hold them. The crop birthed communities, requiring nails and braces for houses, the tools to build the houses, roads to connect them, and more iron to keep it all running. Let his father keep his disdain and his spirit, too. The two men were..
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Colson Whitehead |
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62c7c57
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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.
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Colson Whitehead |
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55c6589
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But we have all been branded even if you can't see it, inside if not without--and the wound from Randall's cane was the very same thing, marking her as his.
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Colson Whitehead |
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7088e98
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If you weren't a little dirty at the end of the day, you weren't much of a man.
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Colson Whitehead |
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db55e89
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EVER since she saw a woodcut of a missionary surrounded by jungle natives, Ethel thought it would be spiritually fulfilling to serve the Lord in dark Africa, delivering savages to the light.
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Colson Whitehead |
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9b28663
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It was her grandmother talking that Sunday evening when Caesar approached Cora about the underground railroad, and she said no. Three weeks later she said yes. This time it was her mother talking.
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Colson Whitehead |
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1413413
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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 their people will have it better.
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Colson Whitehead |