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“I had given up some youth for knowledge, but my gain was more valuable than the loss”
― I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
― I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“It was awful to be Negro and have no control over my life. It was brutal to be young and already trained to sit quietly and listen to charges brought against my color with no chance of defense. We should all be dead. I thought I should like to see us all dead, one on top of the other. A pyramid of flesh with the whitefolks on the bottom, as the broad base, then the Indians with their silly tomahawks and teepees and wigwams and treaties, the Negroes with their mops and recipes and cotton sacks and spirituals sticking out of their mouths. The Dutch children should all stumble in their wooden shoes and break their necks. The French should choke to death on the Louisiana Purchase (1803) while silkworms ate all the Chinese with their stupid pigtails. As a species, we were an abomination. All of us.”
― I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
― I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“You must find a boy your own age. Someone mild and beautiful to be your lover. Someone who will tremble for your touch, offer you a marguerite by its long stem with his eyes lowered. Someone whose fingers are a poem.”
― White Oleander
― White Oleander

“She comprehended the perversity of life, that in the struggle lies the joy.”
― I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
― I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“People whose history and future were threatened each day by extinction considered that it was only by divine intervention that they were able to live at all. I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed.”
― I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
― I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Athen’s 2024 Year in Books
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