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Angela Flournoy Books

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The Wilderness

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“What am I doing with my life? In the American sense, the bootstrapping capitalist one, her life as-is seemed a good answer. She was a relatively successful business owner, she employed young people, she brought good, wholesome food to the hood. During the pandemic, she had managed to keep her entire full-time staff on payroll, even through the early months when the restaurant was closed and only she and a skeleton crew fulfilled delivery orders. Sure. And yet. So many, too many people had nothing. What was the point of working hard, having something, when one had to live with the knowledge of so much want?”

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“Guilt gripped her--she was the person who determined Reina's salary, which in turn determined these conditions. But she remembered that Reina sent the bulk of her money back home to her parents. She would be able to afford a better place otherwise, surely. It was a kind of sacrifice that Nakia never had cause to make. She hoped she would be willing if circumstances called for it. Why was life so hard for some people? A question people called you stupid for asking, yet no one could give you a straightforward explanation.”

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“It's just that some of the people I've met through her, the athletes, the influencers and writers? They all have this same self-righteousness, like this assumption that what they're doing is more valuable than anyone else's work, but they don't do anything if they're not the marquee name, if it doesn't further their brand in some way. They're fucking hollow inside. I don't know, it makes my skin crawl. And it doesn't help that they all happen to be rich.”

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“Build up her own life--how? How to build a life with no one, rooted to nothing but a house full of an old man's things? Desiree began devoting weekday mornings to scouring the internet for jobs. She learned what she had no interest in--hospitality, teaching, medicine--but what she might apply herself to remained as much a mystery as before Nolan died.”

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“The unvarnished horrors of modern warfare were on everyone's social media feeds now, had been for months, and the truly bleak thing was that there seemed to be just as many people outraged by the carnage as onlookers cheering it on. The more powerful a person was--a politician, a celebrity, or even just a person who made a good living online--the more they seemed fine with or were determined to be silent about the preventable misery of others, whether they be Palestinian, Sudanese, Congolese, or Haitian.”

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“Desiree, Snoop Dogg fan since elementary school, had known for a long time that it was possible to limn the line between enthusiasm for form and endorsement of content. One did this every day, for various reasons. "It's an essential, tragic part of being a Black woman in America," Monique might have said. Most things were objectionable if you looked at them up close.”

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“Nakia had come across Conrad and Juanita's box of Obama family memorabilia--novelty plates, buttons, their tickets to the first inauguration--when she helped them to pack up to move back to New Jersey. A time capsule of wild hope, almost painful to look back on now. "We really thought that man was gonna be the Black Messiah or something," she said. "What a time." "Yeah, turns out he was very much not," January said. "And white people ain't been okay since. Look at them.”

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