She wore her sexuality with an older woman's ease, and not like an awkward purse, never knowing how to hold it, where to hang it, or when to just put it down.
Interpretation
The quote highlights a woman's confidence and comfort in her sexuality, contrasting it with the clumsiness of those who struggle with it.
In this quote, Zadie Smith illustrates the ease with which some women embrace their sexuality, portraying it as a natural and confident part of their identity, akin to an older woman's poise. It contrasts this with those who feel awkward or uncertain about their sexual expression, likening it to managing an uncomfortable accessory, which implies that, for some, self-acceptance and confidence in one's own sensuality can be a journey of understanding and comfort.
In practice
During a women's empowerment seminar, you might use this quote to discuss the importance of embracing one's sexuality.
Because immigrants have always been particularly prone to repetition - it's something to do with that experience of moving from West to East or East to West or from island to island. Even when you arrive, you're still going back and forth; your children are going round and round. There's no proper term for it - original sin seems too harsh; maybe original trauma would be better.
You know, you don't expect everyone to be as educated as everyone else or have the same achievements, but you expect at least to be offered at least some of the opportunities, and libraries are the most simple and the most open way to give people access to books.
He did not consider if or how or why he loved them. They were just love: they were the first evidence he ever had of love, and they would be the last confirmation of love when everything else fell away.
We cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are. Which leads me to my second point: writers do not write what they want, they write what they can.
I think of reading like a balanced diet; if your sentences are too baggy, too baroque, cut back on fatty Foster Wallace, say, and pick up Kafka as roughage.
I never attended a creative writing class in my life. I have a horror of them.
This is not love. It is a crime... You can't look the other way just because you have not experienced domestic violence with your own flesh.
If my good friend Dr. Gasparri says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch. It's normal. It's normal.
The Puritan ethic of marriage was first to look not for a partner whom you do love passionately at this moment but rather for one whom you can love steadily as your best friend for life, then to proceed with God’s help to do just that.
It takes a year, nephew... a full turn of the calendar, to get over losing someone.
To understand how any society functions you must understand the relationship between the men and the women.
She had not wanted him to but had let him have his way because ever since she was a child she had generally yielded before anyone with strong willpower, especially if it was a man, not because she was naturally submissive, but because strong male willpower gave her a feeling of safety and trust, together with acceptance and a desire to give in.
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