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Quote by Michael Eric Dyson

“I went to the library and began to read some stuff on my own. My discovery of James Baldwin was life-changing. I read Go Tell It on the Mountain first, and that was hugely impactful.”

Quote by Michael Eric Dyson

Author

Michael Eric Dyson

Michael Eric Dyson is an American author, academic, and public intellectual, born on October 23, 1958. He is recognized for his work in African American studies, sociology, and cultural criticism. Dyson has authored numerous books on race, politics, and culture, and has held faculty positions at various universities. more

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“The beauty of the literary art, the grappling with the black church, the wrestling with one's identity in the bosom of a complicated black community that was both bulwark to the larger white society as well as a threshing ground, so to speak, to hash out the differences that black people have among ourselves.”

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“I grew up in the church and began to recite set pieces at the age of four and five, like many of the other kids.”

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“We began to connect literacy and learning and the lively effects of biblical knowledge and preaching pretty early. That was a tremendous impact.”

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“When I was 12 years old, my pastor came to the church: Dr. Fredrick Samson. And that was revolutionary because he mentored me and I got a chance to see up close the impact of a rhetorical genius.”

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“I received my calling and accepted it at around 18.”

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“I went to school four years later than most people because I was a teen father, hustled on the streets, worked, lived on welfare and the like, and didn't get to college until almost 21. That's when I officially got licensed and ordained, right after that.”

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“I was trying to write a straightforward book of sociological analysis, or at least cultural criticism, and I failed.”

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“I've written a lot of other books and this book [Tears we cannot stop] was different. I couldn't just say what I wanted to say in the same style that I said it in those other books. I felt compelled to preach.”

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“When people are not sure about their future, when their economies are suffering, when their personal fortunes are flagging, we have often in this country turned to nativism and xenophobia and racism and anti-immigrant sensibilities and passions to express our sense of outrage at what we can't control - and to forge a kind of fitful solidarity that turns out to be rather insular - we look inward and not outward.”

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“The demand for racial (and sexual) justice gets reduced to politics of identity - and excoriating the so-called perpetrators of the identity politics.”

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