History and socio-economic inequality and all those things had, like, borne down upon my family and my community and really sort of narrowed our choices.
Interpretation
Historical and socio-economic factors restrict the opportunities available to individuals and communities.
This quote speaks to the profound impact of historical events and socio-economic disparities on the lives of individuals and their communities. Jesmyn Ward highlights how these forces have not only shaped her family's experiences but have also limited the choices and opportunities available to them, illustrating the interconnectedness of social justice and personal narratives.
In practice
In a discussion about systemic racism and its effects on community choices.
I always understood my ancestry, like that of so many others in the Gulf Coast, to be a tangle of African slaves, free men of color, French and Spanish immigrants, British colonists, Native Americans - but in what proportion, and what might that proportion tell me about who I thought I was?
In the South, there is more overt racism. It's more willfully ignorant and brazen. But it's not as if by moving I'm going to be able to escape institutionalized racism. It's not as though my life won't be twisted and impacted by racism anymore. It will.
The ugly heart of the South still beats with this idea that one group of people is worth less.
Katrina silenced me for two years. I wrote a 12-page essay on my experience in Katrina, and that's it. I didn't write anything for, like, two, two and a half years after Katrina hit because it was so traumatic.
Hip-hop, which is my generation's blues, is important to the characters that I write about. They use hip-hop to understand the world through language.
With all the main characters that I write, it's always very important to me that they have good and bad aspects of their personality. It's important to me that they're complicated and that they're human.
An intimate relationship is one in which neither party silences, sacrifices, or betrays the self and each party expresses strength and vulnerability, weakness and competence in a balanced way.
Acquaintance. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.
I traffic in empathy. I try to be vulnerable with people so they can be vulnerable back. I've always been searching for empathy in other people. It's when I feel most not alone.
People often think of America as a classless society, but, of course, that isn't true. Within immigrant communities, there's an enormous distinction of class, depending on who your parents are, and that kind of thing comes out really quick in things like marriage and interpersonal relationships.
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 had a sense of humor. Her inarticulateness made us believe we were eloquent. Her poverty kept us generous. Even her waking dreams we used--to silence our own nightmares.
I want to help transgender individuals who might be struggling realize that they have to love themselves and stay true to who they are because if they keep moving forward, and keep a positive attitude, then things will get better.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.