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Quote of the Day - February 25, 2022
Quote of the Day – February 25, 2022
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“Memory (the deliberate act of remembering) is a form of willed creation. It is not an effort to find out the way it really was—that is research. The point is to dwell on the way it appeared and why it appeared in that particular way.”
— Toni Morrison, “Memory, Creation, and Fiction, from The Source of Self-Regard
“Critics generally don’t associate Black people with ideas. They see marginal people; they see just another story about Black folks. They regard the whole thing as sociologically interesting perhaps, but very parochial. There’s a notion out in the land that there are human beings one writes about, and then there are Black people or Indians or some other marginal group. If you write about the world from that point of view, somehow it is considered lesser. We are people, not aliens. We live, we love, and we die.”
—
Toni Morrison (via blackcontemporaryart)
Powerful quote; something I’ve thought about a lot regarding the truly insufficient and dehumanizing way that Black characters/Black literature/Black life is seen in the White Gaze.
(via gradientlair)
“The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, midwifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. Whether it is obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified language of the academy or the commodity driven language of science; whether it is the malign language of law-without-ethics, or language designed for the estrangement of minorities, hiding its racist plunder in its literary cheek—it must be rejected, altered and exposed. It is the language that drinks blood, laps vulnerabilities, tucks its fascist boots under crinolines of respectability and patriotism as it moves relentlessly toward the bottom line and the bottomed-out mind. Sexist language, racist language, theistic language—all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas… . Language can never “pin down” slavery, genocide, war. Nor should it yearn for the arrogance to be able to do so. Its force, its felicity is in its reach toward the ineffable. Be it grand or slender, burrowing, blasting, or refusing to sanctify; whether it laughs out loud or is a cry without an alphabet, the choice word, the chosen silence, unmolested language surges toward knowledge, not its destruction. But who does not know of literature banned because it is interrogative; discredited because it is critical; erased because alternate? And how many are outraged by the thought of a self-ravaged tongue?”
— Toni Morrison
“I think of beauty as an absolute necessity. I don’t think it’s a privilege or an indulgence, it’s not even a quest. I think it’s almost like knowledge, which is to say, it’s what we were born for.”
— Toni Morrison, from The Paris Review Podcast
He fell for an eighteen-year-old girl with one of those deepdown, spooky loves that made him so sad he shot her just to keep the feeling going.
Toni Morrison, Jazz
“No more running—from nothing. I will never run from another thing on this earth.”
— Toni Morrison | Beloved
“No more apologies for a bleeding heart when the opposite is no heart at all. Danger of losing our humanity must be met with more humanity.”
— The Source of Self-Regard: The War on Error by Toni Morrison (via metrosouthern)
august reading wrap up
highlights
the hacienda by isabel cañas -- ★★★★★
lovable main character, hot priest, forbidden love, rebecca inspired, and beautiful writing. what more could you ask for? this book truly set me up to be a lover of this author and all future projects isabel produces. cannot wait to get my hands on 'vampires of el norte" next.
babel by rf kuang -- ★★★★★
lets start by saying that anything rf kuang has written is just an automatic five stars. but not out of pure bias (though i love her work), she genuinely is just stunning in everything she chooses to pursue. this, obviously, is my opinion. babel is an amazing story, and i genuinely wish i could reread for the first time.
percy jackson and the olympians -- ★★★★★
this is based on purely bias and nostalgia. i reread the first five books due to the announcement to show. like every other pjo fan (we're so predictable). surprisingly, the series still holds up extremely well even as i age. i cannot wait for the show. glad i set aside time to just read these because they were such a blast from the past.
jazz by toni morrison -- ★★★★★
the back of this book was the reason i read it. "a man shoots his teenaged lover and then his wife goes to her funeral with a knife intending to scar her. and so sets a story of love and obsession." what made this five stars - despite being written by toni morrison - is the way she went about telling this story. like jazz music, where everyone is ocnversing and interrrupting and changing the way the song unfolds to beautiful and memorable. such is toni morrison's writing in this book. a new perspective, a new character that ties everything in, the narrator, the way the city seems alive and character of itself. i adored this book.
other star reads + their ratings:
woman, eating by claire kohda -- ★★★★☆ frankenstein by mary shelly -- ★★★★☆ alone with you in the ether by olivie blake -- ★★★★★ imaginary girls by nova ren suma -- ★★★☆☆ blood over bright haven by m.l. wang -- ★★★★★ book lovers by emily henry -- ★★★☆☆ marrow by trisha wolfe, brynne weaver -- ★★★☆☆ the lovely bones by alice bold -- ★★★★☆ these violent delights by micah nemerever -- ★★★★☆
“No matter what all your teeth and wet fingers anticipated, there was no accounting for the way that simple joy could shake you. How loose the silk. How fine and loose and free.”
— Toni Morrison, from Beloved