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Quote by Esi Edugyan

“The condition of being alienated and "othered" reflects the ways in which navigating Western societies as a Black person is an endlessly unsettling experience, something that might be ripped whole from the pages of a speculative novel. Because of this, the search for lost cultural touchstones is a gesture towards survival: it is an Afrofuturistic act. At its heart it is the creation of a possible future based on a reconstructed, or reimagined past. In this way, a ware is wages against erasure.”

Book:Out of the Sun: On Race and Storytelling

Work

Out of the Sun: On Race and Storytelling

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Author

Esi Edugyan

Esi Edugyan is a Canadian novelist born in Ethiopia in 1977, who later moved to Canada with her family. Her works are known for their profound character development and rich cultural background. She has won multiple literary awards. more

“The time has come to realize that the interracial drama acted out on the American continent has not only created a new black man, it has created a new white man, too. No road whatever will lead Americans back to the simplicity of this European village where white men still have the luxury of looking on me as a stranger. I am not, really, a stranger any longer for any American alive. One of the things that distinguishes Americans from other people is that no other people has ever been so deeply involved in the lives of black men, and vice versa. This fact faced, with all its implications, it can be seen that the history of the American Negro problem is not merely shameful, it is also something of an achievement. For even when the worst has been said, it must also be added that the perpetual challenge posed by this problem was always, somehow, perpetually met. It is precisely this black-white experience which may prove of indispensable value to us in the world we face today. This world is white no longer, and it will never be white again.”

Race History American History African Americans Race Relations Blackness Whites Whiteness Stranger In The Village

Book:Notes of a Native Son

Source: Notes of a Native Son

“I sold my elegant blackness to all those childhood ghosts and now they pay me for it.”

Beauty Blackness Race And Racism In America

Book:God Help the Child

Source: God Help the Child

“We're all astronauts, really, aren't we; interstellar astronauts, travelling so far into the blackness we can never return.”

Life Space Return Travel Astronaut Blackness Interstellar No Return

Author:S. K Tremayne

“You are walking along a road peacefully. You trip. You fall into blackness. That's the past - or perhaps the future. And you know that there is no past, no future, there is only this blackness, changing faintly, slowly, but always the same.”