Before I was ever a poet, my father was writing poems about me, so it was a turning of the tables when I became a poet and started answering, speaking back to his poems in ways that I had not before.
Natasha TretheweyRead
I think that it's hard enough being an adolescent and wanting so much to fit in with your peers, your schoolmates, and to erase any sign of difference, to be part of the group. And being biracial but also being black in a predominately white school marked me as different.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Navigating adolescence is challenging, especially for those who feel different due to their identity.
In this quote, Natasha Trethewey reflects on the struggles of adolescence, particularly the desire to fit in with peers while grappling with personal identity, specifically as a biracial individual in a predominantly white school. She highlights the inherent challenges faced by young people who feel marked as different, illustrating how such differences can significantly impact their experiences and sense of belonging during formative years.
Themes
AdolescenceIdentityFitting InDifferenceBiracial
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about diversity and inclusion, one might reference this quote to highlight the importance of embracing individuality.
More from Natasha Trethewey
All quotes →I've been telling my students, 'Imitate, imitate.' And they say, 'Well, what if I plagiarize, or what if I'm not original? I want to be myself.' And I always tell them, 'Your self will shine through'... If you allow yourself to feel deeply and honestly, what you say won't be like anyone else.
Natasha TretheweyRead
'Memory.' 'Race.' 'Murder.' That's what they say about me. I am an elegiac poet. I have some historical questions, and I'm grappling with ways to make sense of history; why it still haunts us in our most intimate relationships with each other, but also in our political decisions.
Natasha TretheweyRead
For a long time, I've been interested in cultural memory and historical erasure.
Natasha TretheweyRead
Often as a poet I find that I am somewhat outside an experience I want to hold onto, consciously taking mental notes or writing them down in my journal - for fear that I will forget. It's not unlike being on a trip and taking pictures, your face behind a camera the whole time - the entire experience mediated by a lens.
Natasha TretheweyRead
People always want to be on the right side of history; it is a lot easier to say, 'What an atrocity that was' then it is to say, 'What an atrocity this is.'
Natasha TretheweyRead
Similar quotes
A fact is like a sack - it won't stand up if it's empty. To make it stand up, first you have to put in it all the reasons and feelings that caused it in the first place.
Luigi PirandelloRead
Evolution does not isolate us from the rest of the Kosmos, it unites us with the rest of the Kosmos: the same currents that produced birds from dust and poetry from rocks produce egos from ids and sages from egos.
Ken WilberRead
Near the gates and within two cities there will be scourges the like of which was never seen: famine within plague, people put out by steel, crying to the great immortal God for relief.
NostradamusRead
Needing to have reality confirmed and experience enhanced by photographs is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted. Industrial societies turn their citizens into image-junkies; it is the most irresistible form of mental pollution.
Susan SontagRead
If you go searching for the Great Creator, you will come back empty-handed. The source of the universe is ultimately unknowable, a great invisible river flowing forever through a vast and fertile valley. Silent and uncreated, it creates all things.
LaoziRead
Nobody these days holds the written word in such high esteem as police states do.
Italo CalvinoRead