“I have an emotional attachment to it all. The earth. The sky. I’ve studied it all my life. And it hurts me whenever somebody hurts this, out here. My home.”
Source: Devoured: The Extraordinary Story of Kudzu, the Vine That Ate the South
“I am a patchwork American, strung together by DNA strands from distant places. Meant to exist in the margins. These are my labels, my unshakeable question marks. Belonging to no one, with nowhere to belong. I am still struggling to understand where I fall, where I fit. Am I invasive?”
Source: Devoured: The Extraordinary Story of Kudzu, the Vine That Ate the South
“The air is charged, the beings making up the forest biome thrumming to a beat I can’t quite understand.”
Source: Devoured: The Extraordinary Story of Kudzu, the Vine That Ate the South
“After all, the vine is still wrapped around the outside of her home, rows of large sheets of arresting leaves embracing the columns of her front porch, both spilling inside and trailing out to the waiting world beyond her doorstep.”
Source: Devoured: The Extraordinary Story of Kudzu, the Vine That Ate the South
“Just one tendril, leaping toward the dawn of a better horizon, at a time.”
Source: Devoured: The Extraordinary Story of Kudzu, the Vine That Ate the South
“Like kudzu, we have been stamped as something to shun. Like kudzu, we have thrived in areas we are unwanted, despite resistance to our existence. Like kudzu, we have persisted.”
Source: Devoured: The Extraordinary Story of Kudzu, the Vine That Ate the South
“Woven within the wild expanse of greenery is a timeless relic, a bewildering being enshrouded in over a century of magic and mystery.”
Source: Devoured: The Extraordinary Story of Kudzu, the Vine That Ate the South
“In fact, you couldn't even be sure that everything you had assumed to be an expression of your black, unfettered self-- the humor, the song, the behind-the-back pass-- had been freely chosen by you. At best, these things were a refuge; at worst, a trap. Following this maddening logic, the only thing you could choose as your own was withdrawal into a smaller and smaller coil of rage, until being black meant only the knowledge of your own powerlessness, of your own defeat. And the final irony: Should you refuse this defeat and lash out at your captors, they would have a name for that, too, a name that could cage you just as good. Paranoid. Militant. Violent. Nigger.”
Source: Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
“Whenever I read history, and try to understand a character of Vampire that survives in its Gloomy House after sucking the blood of a virgin. Indeed, it defines an illusion. If I compare that with the White House, where ever, it exists; transparently, it demonstrates the same description; however, it falls not under an illusion; it verifies a reality of survival. The solution everyone knows, need only the courage for the peace of entire humanity on the blue planet.”
“Naturally, I carry not a distinctive card between white and black; however, I resist and fight discriminating and inhuman conduct between black and white in whatever way by whoever. My heart and prayer stay in the rights of the victims since equality speaks humanity; otherwise, transparent justice becomes crucified; it's a mentality of evil.”