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96c1e33
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She told them that the only grace they could have was the grace they could imagine. That if they could not see it, they would not have it. "Here," she said, "in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They don't love your eyes; they'd just as soon pick em out. No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder th..
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Toni Morrison |
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aaf8fed
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this is the it you've been looking for
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Toni Morrison |
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ff9a09a
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Black women were armed, black women were dangerous and the less money they had the deadlier the weapon they chose.
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women
toni-morrison
jazz
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Toni Morrison |
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28f2ee5
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Little of that makes for love, but it does pump desire. The woman who churned a man's blood as she leaned all alone on a fence by a country road might not expect even to catch his eye in the City. But if she is clipping quickly down the big-city street in heels, swinging her purse, or sitting on a stoop with a cool beer in her hand, dangling her shoe from the toes of her foot, the man, reacting to her posture, to soft skin on stone, the wei..
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Toni Morrison |
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58b9ffa
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a habit that had become one of those necessary things for the night... surely a body-friendly if not familiar-lying next to you. Someone whose touch is a reassurance, not an affront or a nuissance. Whose heavy breathing neither enrages nor discusts you, but amuses you like that of a cherished pet.
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Toni Morrison |
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2c44131
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I welcomed the circling sharks but they avoided me as if knowing I preferred their teeth to the chains around my neck my waist my ankles
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Toni Morrison |
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11a854a
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I didn't fall in love, I rose in it.
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Toni Morrison |
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123e5e8
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I told you again that you were the reason Adam ate the apple and its core. That when he left Eden, he left a rich man. Not only did he have Eve, but he had the taste of the first apple in the world in his mouth for the rest of his life.
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Toni Morrison |
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d7667a2
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One chance, I thought. There is no protection but there is difference. You stood there in those shoes and the tall man laughed and said he would take me to close the debt. I knew Senhor would not allow it. I said you. Take you, my daughter. Because I saw the tall man see you as a human child, not pieces of eight. I knelt before him. Hoping for a miracle. He said yes. It was not a miracle. Bestowed by God. It was a mercy. Offered by a human...
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Toni Morrison |
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4e9f520
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Mrs. Breedlove considered herself an upright and Christian woman, burdened with a no-count man, whom God wanted her to punish. (Cholly was beyond redemption, of course, and redemption was hardly the point - Mrs. Breedlove was not interested in Christ the Redeemer, but rather Christ the Judge.) Often she could be heard discoursing with Jesus about Cholly, pleading with Him to help her "strike the bastard down from his pea-knuckle of pride." ..
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Toni Morrison |
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74e4b44
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Outside, snow solidified itself into graceful forms. The peace of winter stars seemed permanent.
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winter
snow
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Toni Morrison |
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ee0a05f
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She needed what most colored girls needed: a chorus of mamas, grandmamas, aunts, cousins, sisters, neighbors, Sunday school teachers, best girl friends, and what all to give her the strength life demanded of her--and the humor with which to live it.
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Toni Morrison |
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fc99ed6
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There is no protection. To be female in this place is to be an open wound that cannot heal. Even if scars form, the festering is ever below.
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slave-women
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Toni Morrison |
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497cb74
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You got a life? Live it! Live the motherfuckin life!
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Toni Morrison |
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f945356
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Kneeling in the keeping room where she usually went to talk-think it was clear why Baby Suggs was so starved for color. There was't any except for two orange squares in a quilt that made the absence shout. The walls of the room were slate-colored, the floor earth-brown, the wooden dresser the color of itself, curtains white, and the dominating feature, the quilt over an iron cot, was made up of scraps of blue serge, black, brown and gray wo..
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Toni Morrison |
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e235a7f
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Pain. I seem to have an affection, a kind of sweettooth for it. Bolts of lightning, little rivulets of thunder. And I the eye of the storm. Mourning the split trees, hens starving on rooftops. Figuring out what can be done to save them since they cannot save themselves without me because- well, its my storm, isn't it? I break lives to prove I can mend them back again. And although the pain is theirs, I share it, don't I? Of course. Of cours..
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Toni Morrison |
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213627c
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You are about to find out what it takes, how the world is, how it works and how it changes when you are a parent. Good luck and God help the child.
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Toni Morrison |
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08acc60
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Nothing could be counted on in a world where even when you were a solution you were a problem.
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Toni Morrison |
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baa2e10
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I said you. Take you, my daughter. Because I saw the tall man see you as a human child, not pieces of eight.
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Toni Morrison |
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ef2586e
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Destructive Love; The Bluest Eye January 15, 2008 at 23:42 (books, love) (books, love, the bluest eye, toni morrison) Along with romantic love, she was introduced to another-physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion. In equating physical beauty with virtue, she stripped her mind, bound it, and collected self-contempt by the heap...
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Toni Morrison |
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dea7beb
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Rebuffed from his fine feelings, Milkman matched her cold tone. "You loved those white folks that much?" "Love?" she asked. "Love?" "Well, what are you taking care of their dogs for?" "Do you know why she killed herself? She couldn't stand to see the place go to ruin. She couldn't live without servants and money and what it could buy. Every cent was gone and the taxes took whatever came in. She had to let the upstairs maids go, then the coo..
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suicide
servitude
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Toni Morrison |
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0e02da7
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It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes, those eyes that held the pictures, and knew the sights--if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different.
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Toni Morrison |
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2955f66
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As Reverend Deal moved into his sermon, the hands of the women unfolded like pairs of raven's wings and flew high above their hats in the air. They did not hear all of what he said;they heard the one word, or phrase, or inflection that was for them the connection between the event and themselves. For some it was the term "Sweet Jesus". And they saw the Lamb's eye and the truly innocent victim: themselves. They acknowledged the innocent chil..
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Toni Morrison |
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72aee23
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Come see," I was thinking. "Be the last thing you behold,"
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Toni Morrison |
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b1ea740
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Death is a sure thing but life is just as certain. Problem is you can't know in advance.
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Toni Morrison (Author) |
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0fadab0
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Beloved, she my daughter. She mine. See. She come back to me of her own free will and I don't have to explain a thing.
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Toni Morrison |
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40e5ad2
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It's not about choosing somebody over her. It's about making space for somebody along with her.
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Toni Morrison |
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98e2331
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All of our waste which we dumped on her and which she absorbed. And all of our beauty, which was hers first and which she gave to us. All of us--all who knew her--felt so wholesome after we cleaned ourselves on her. We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness. Her simplicity decorated us, her guilt sanctified us, her pain made us glow with health, her awkwardness made us think we has a sense of humor. Her inarticulateness made u..
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Toni Morrison |
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6b8b4b7
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I will call them my people, which were not my people; and her beloved, which was not beloved.
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Toni Morrison |
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fa3befd
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Bit by bit, at 124 and in the Clearing, along with others, she had claimed herself. Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another.
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Toni Morrison |
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ffec03e
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They hooted and laughed all the way back to the car, teasing Milkman, egging him on to tell more about how scared he was. And he told them. Laughing too, hard, loud, and long. Really laughing, and he found himself exhilarated by simply walking the earth. Walking it like he belonged on it; like his legs were stalks, tree trunks, a part of his body that extended down down down into the rock and soil, and were comfortable there--on the earth a..
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laughter
belonging
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Toni Morrison |
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368ec4f
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This soil is bad for certain kinds of flowers. Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear, and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live. We are wrong, of course, but it doesn't matter. It's too late. At least on the edge of my town, among the garbage and the sunflowers of my town, it's much, much, much too late.
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pecola-breedlove
the-bluest-eye
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Toni Morrison |
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b74f47c
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Well, feel this, why don't you? Feel how it feels to have a bed to sleep in and somebody there not worrying you to death about what you got to do each day to deserve it. Feel how that feels. And if that don't get it, feel how it feels to be a colored woman roaming the roads with anything God made liable to jump on you. Feel that.
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Toni Morrison |
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2b3ba9f
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Risky, thought Paul D, very risky. For a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love. The best thing, he knew, was to love just a little bit; everything, just a little bit, so when they brok its back, or shoved it in a croaker sack, well, maybe you'd have a little love left over for the next one.
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Toni Morrison |
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57e06c8
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In trying to make the slave experience intimate, I hoped the sense of things being both under control and out of control would be persuasive throughout; that the order and quietitude of every day life would be violently disrupted by the chaos of the needy dead; that the herculean effort to forget would be threatened by memory desperate to stay alive. To render enslavement as a personal experience, language must first get out of the way.
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Toni Morrison |
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e8652fe
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They did not believe death was accidental - life might be, but death was deliberate.
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Toni Morrison |
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cc5bf3d
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But they had been down on all fours naked, not touching except their lips right down there on the floor where the tie is pointing to, on all fours like (uh huh, go on, say it) like dogs. Nibbling at each other, not even touching, not even looking at each other, just their lips, and when I opened the door they didn't even look for a minute and I thought the reason they are not looking up is because they are not doing that. So it's all right...
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Toni Morrison |
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c3092ac
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Shadrack rose and returned to the cot, where he fell into the first sleep of his new life. A sleep deeper than the hospital drugs; deeper than the pits of plums, steadier than the condor's wing; more tranquil than the curve of eggs.
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Toni Morrison |
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c34460e
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Oh, some of us "loved" her. The Maginot Line. And Cholly loved her. I'm sure he did. He, at any rate, was the one who loved her enough to touch her, envelope her, give something of her filled the matrix of her agony with death. Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe. There is no gift fo..
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Toni Morrison |
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bb2a3db
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Where was the lecture on how slavery alone catapulted the whole country from agriculture into the industrial age in two decades? White folks' hatred, their violence, was the gasoline that kept the profit motors running.
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slavery-and-human-trafficking
slavery-in-the-united-states
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Toni Morrison |
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52205ef
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Mister was allowed to be and stay what he was. But I wasn't allowed to be and stay what I was [...] School teacher changed me. I was something else and that something else was less than a chicken sitting in the sun on a tub. (Paul D.)
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toni-morrison
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Toni Morrison |
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d2aee33
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She missed -- without knowing what she missed-- paints and crayons
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poverty
culture
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Toni Morrison |
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04082aa
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The death of self-esteem can occur quickly, easily in children, before their ego has "legs," so to speak. Couple the vulnerability of youth with indifferent parents, dismissive adults, and a world, which, in its language, laws, and images, re-enforces despair, and the journey to destruction is sealed." --
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Toni Morrison |
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a072f2c
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Things got better but I still had to be careful. Very careful in how I raised her. I had to be strict, very strict. Lula Ann needed to learn how to behave, how to keep her head down and not to make trouble. I don't care how many times she changes her name. Her color is a cross she will always carry. But it's not my fault. It's not my fault. It's not my fault. It's not. Bride I'm scared.
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Toni Morrison |