As time went on, we learned to arm ourselves in our different ways. Some of us with real guns, some of us with more ephemeral weapons, an idea or improbable plan or some sort of formulation about how best to move through the world. An idea that will let us be. Protect us and keep us safe. But a weapon nonetheless.
Colson WhiteheadColored, Negro, Afro-American, African American. ... Every couple of years someone came up with something that got us an inch closer to the truth. Bit by bit we crept along. As if that thing we believed to be approaching actually existed.
Colson WhiteheadBeing a slave meant never having the stability of knowing your family would be together as many years as God designed it to be. It meant you could come back from picking cotton in a field to find that your children are gone, your husband's gone, your mother's gone. It meant knowing you are property that could be sold to the highest bidder, of value only to continue to support the plantation economy.
Colson WhiteheadAs I get older and write more books I'm definitely allowing the humorous side of my personality more rein in my work.
Colson WhiteheadI write the books that I'm compelled to and I definitely learn things about the world when I write them, and I hope that other people get something out of them, enjoy them, see the world differently when they're done.
Colson Whitehead