“From the beginning, our relationship was formula for disaster. Depressed people often attract unhealthy relationships and inadvertently subject themselves and their already battered self-image, to additional abuse… You feel as if you are worthless so you attach yourself to someone who you think will give your life some meaning, be a safe harbor for your souls. But only you can protect what’s inside.”
Source: Willow Weep for Me: A Black Woman's Journey Through Depression
“...the desire that no daughter of mine should ever be in a position to be able to write BY GRAND CENTRAL STATION I SAT DOWN AND WEPT -- exquisite prose though it might contain -- 'BY GRAND CENTRAL STATION I TORE OFF HIS BALLS' would be more like it, I should hope.)”
“I'm twenty-two and a woman.
One of the ways men diminish women's status and our contribution whilst simultaneously entrenching their quasi-paternal male authority is to call us girls. Girls go to school, Captain. Women tend the wounded, make the shells and drive the ambulances.”
Source: The First Casualty
“Still, it is like Shug say, You have to git man off your eyeball, before you can see anything a'tall”
Source: The Color Purple
“The man is not a provider [...] but a scarecrow for other men.”
Source: 7000 years: ...of patriarchy. Until the radical era
“Cuando una mujer tiene que encontrar una forma nueva de vivir y rompe con la historia social que ha borrado su nombre, se espera que se odie a sí misma atrozmente, que enloquezca de dolor, que llore arrepentida. Son las joyas reservadas para ella en la corona del patriarcado, siempre a su disposición. No faltan las lágrimas, pero es mejor atravesar la oscuridad negra y azulada que quedarse con esas joyas que nada valen”
Source: The Cost of Living: A Working Autobiography
“White women who suffer from mental illness are depicted as idle, spoiled, or just plain hysterical. Black men are demonized and pathologized. Black women with psychological problems are certainly not seen as geniuses; we are generally not labeled ‘hysterical’ or ‘eccentric’ or even ‘pathological’. When a black woman suffers from a mental disorder, the overwhelming opinion is that she is weak. And weakness in black women is intolerable.”
Source: Willow Weep for Me: A Black Woman's Journey Through Depression
“I’ve frequently been told things like: “Girl, you’ve been hanging out with too many white folk” ; “What do you have to be depressed about? If our people could make it through slavery, we can make it through anything” ; “Take your troubles to Jesus, not no damn psychiatrist.”
Source: Willow Weep for Me: A Black Woman's Journey Through Depression
“The illusion of strength has been and continues to be of major significance to me as a black woman. The one myth that I have had to endure my entire life is that of my supposed birthright to strength. Black women are supposed to be strong – caretakers, nurtures, healers of other people – any of the twelve dozen variations of Mammy. Emotional hardship is supposed to be built into the structure of our lives. It went along with the territory of being both black and female in a society that completely undervalues the lives of black people and regards all women as second-class citizens. It seemed that suffering, for a black woman, was part of the package.
Or so I thought.”
Source: Willow Weep for Me: A Black Woman's Journey Through Depression
“You have brought me here, gentlemen, in hopes of conquest--in an attempt to rein in this feminine largeness, to shrink it down and force it to acquiesce to your paternal control, to allow our culture to forget that any of this dragon business ever happened. This, my friends, is an impossibility.”
Source: When Women Were Dragons