Each of these failures for me is a failure of communication, via a mode of communication that can be violent or meant to behave violently. Butler provides a way of thinking about how language becomes an instrument of violence. And why we feel it as such.

You become a role model because of what you do as a person. There's a certain point where being a role model might come from standing up for yourself and getting rid of emotion that doesn't belong to you, emotion that is being brought on because of racist actions of others.

Each of these failures for me is a failure of communication, via a mode of communication that can be violent or meant to behave violently. Butler provides a way of thinking about how language becomes an instrument of violence. And why we feel it as such.

You want to belong, you want to be here. In interactions with others you're constantly waiting to see that they recognize that you're a human being. That they can feel your heartbeat and you can feel theirs. And that together you will live - you will live together.

I want to believe that in any relational moment a person understands that the other person in front of them is just another human being.

How our availability, our showing up, our presence, leaves us open to that violence. I think it's a question of language, as it arrives from one body to another. It becomes the thing in between the two bodies.

You can’t put the past behind you. It’s buried in you; it’s turned your flesh into its own cupboard. Not everything remembered is useful but it all comes from the world to be stored in you.