“Society conspires against her from early infancy. Her brain is steadily filled with plaster until it sets: ‘If you’re not married by the time you’re twenty-five, you’ll have good reason to be ashamed’; ‘if you laugh, you won’t look dignified’ ; ‘if your face betrays your feelings, you’ll look coarse’; ‘if you mention the existence of a single body hair, you’re repulsive’ ; ‘if a boy kisses you on the cheek in public, you’re a whore’; if you enjoy eating, you’re a pig’; ‘if you take pleasure in sleeping, you’re no better than a cow’; and so on.
These precepts would be merely anecdotal if they weren’t taken so much to heart.”
Source: Stupeur et tremblements
“...I prefer rain -sometimes I feel sunlight will turn me to stone - perhaps I'm a Troll...”
Source: A Familiar Rain
“I had never before heard Mozart's "Idol mio", nor anything sung by so fine a singer as Signora Tirenza, the prima donna from Rome itself. Her astonishing voice transported me to another place of wordless emotion. All my life I had hoped to find that uplifting love that crowns some lucky spirits but evades others, however long they seek it. Would it always escape me? Or should I return home, and try even harder to nurture affection between Michael and myself?”
Source: A Taste for Nightshade
“We were strolling along the waterfront, his favourite walk, going nowhere in particular, the postcolonial condition.”
Source: Admiring Silence
“Although I believe identity politics '"produces limited but real empowerment for its participants," it is important to note that it contains significant problems: first, its essentialist tendency; second, its fixed _we-they_ binary position; third, its homogenization of diverse social oppression; fourth, its simplification of the complexity and paradox of being privileged and unprivileged; and fifth its ruling out of intersectional space of diverse forms of oppression in reality.”
Source: Cosmopolitan Theology: Reconstituting Planetary Hospitality, Neighbor-Love, and Solidarity in an Uneven World
“far noh mattah wat dey say,
come wat may,
we are here to stay
inna Inglan,
inna disya time yah...”
Source: Inglan is a Bitch
“Spiritual love will not resemble worldly love since it desires first and foremost the spiritual perfection of the beloved. Spiritual love wants the beloved to live free—which is to say, free from sin, since virtue is the only true liberty. This is the opposite of the liberty the modern world would have us pursue, which amounts to the freedom to live in whatever sin we feel like. This is a loveless pursuit of liberty, liberty in the context of spiritual blindness.”
Source: This Dark Age - 2024 Edition - Volume 2: The Confrontation Between Man and Evil
“Economic development has been central to the ideologies of post-colonial African states.”
Source: African Anarchism: The History of a Movement
“Philosophy of Bread
To Lenin and Iqbal:
The East treats me as a second class citizen, the West as a third class citizen still,
life is mired in fees, rents and unending bills.
New century’s children keep on breeding, farms get smaller and farmers poorer, it’s the bankruptcy mills,
bread lines get longer, the pestilence kills
whilst the few eat money and honey,
And God laughs at the future.”
Source: Postcolonial Freedom:
“At the National Museum of the American Indian,
68 percent of the collection is from the United States.
I am doing my best to not become a museum
of myself. I am doing my best to breathe in and out.”
Source: Postcolonial Love Poem