You Need Intelligence, And You

I Really Think The Range Of Emotions And Perceptions I Have Had Access To As A Black Person And As A Female Person Are Greater Than Those Of People Who Are Neither.... So It Seems To Me That My World Did Not Shrink Because I Was A Black Female Writer. It Just Got Bigger.

And They Beat. The Women For Having Known Them And No More, No More; The Children For Having Been Them But Never Again. They Killed A Boss So Often And So Completely They Had To Bring Him Back To Life To Pulp Him One More Time. Tasting Hot Mealcake Among Pine Trees, They Beat It Away. Singing Love Songs To Mr. Death, They Smashed His Head. More Than The Rest, They Killed The Flirt Whom Folks Called Life For Leading Them On.

When I Write, I Don't Translate For White Readers.... Dostoevski Wrote For A Russian Audience, But We're Able To Read Him. If I'm Specific, And I Don't Overexplain, Then Anyone Can Overhear Me.

Being Good To Somebody Is Just Like Being Mean To Somebody. Risky. You Don't Get Nothing For It.

And Fantasy It Was, For We Were Not Strong, Only Aggressive; We Were Not Free, Merely Licensed; We Were Not Compassionate, We Were Polite; Not Good, But Well Behaved. We Courted Death In Order To Call Ourselves Brave, And Hid Like Thieves From Life. We Substituted Good Grammar For Intellect; We Switched Habits To Simulate Maturity; We Rearranged Lies And Called It Truth, Seeing In The New Pattern Of An Old Idea The Revelation And The Word.