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Quote by Damon Galgut

“I'd like to accept this on behalf of all the stories told and untold, the writers heard and unheard, from the remarkable continent I'm part of. Please keep listening to us, there's a lot more to come.”

Quote by Damon Galgut

Author

Damon Galgut
Damon Galgut

Damon Galgut is a South African playwright known for his profound psychological insights and portrayals of South African social changes. His works often explore the relationships between individuals and society, history, and memory. more

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“As a practitioner of Witchcraft, my drive is to learn as much magic as I can from whatever sources resonate with me. In those instances in which a practice, symbol, or deity speaks to me and demands my devotion, I make a commitment to honor the cultures from which they originated by pledging to study their histories, to listen to the voices of those who identify as part of those cultures, and, where possible, to support the living people who belong to that cultural group.”

“In college I was an editorial cartoonist for my school paper, The Daily Aztec...I did straight, news-oriented editorial cartoons. Occasionally, my Chicano background snuck in to the toons simply because I might do a César Chavez toon about how the School Student Board was too stupidly racist to allow him to speak on campus or other anti-frat toons on how they were so racist in doing fund-raisers for Tijuana kid charities--dressed in sombreros and begging with tin cups (from an interview in the book Attitude, 2002)”

“Do you know what surprised me most when I came to this country? The way witches are glorified. People here dress up as us for Halloween. They fill their TV shows and social media profiles with our aesthetics. It's like they've forgotten that, for most of human history, witches were something to mutilate, not emulate. Women who were seen as outcasts—too queer, too brown, too unwell...Any one of us on the margins was a target. To me, a pointy hat and a broomstick are not a cute costume; they are a reminder that, for centuries, people were brutalized under the mere assumption they might be what we actually are.”

“Virtually every fact used in business, political life and every day human relations is derived from other 'facts' or assumptions that have been shaped, deliberately or not, by the preexisting power structure. Every fact thus has a power history and what may be called a power future.”

“Gandhi today is up for grabs. He has become abstract. ahistorical, postmodern, no longer a man in and of his time but a free-floating concept, a part of the available stock of cultural symbols, an image that can be borrowed, used, distorted, reinvented, to fit many different purposes, and to the devil with historicity or truth. Richard Attenborough's Gandhi stuck me, when it was first released, as an example of this type of unhistorical Western saint-making. Here was Gandhi-as-guru, purveying the fashionable product, the Wisdom of the East, and Gandhi-as-Christ, dying and frequently going on hunger strike) so that others may live.”

“South Earth Summon (Naskaristana 2800) I am the Son of South Earth, my spice-tolerance is superhuman, but lies-tolerance is nonexistent - my resilience knows no mortal limit, but I have zero tolerance for intolerance. I speak more languages than most northerners, I've devoured more scriptures than most northerners, I have assimilated more cultures and disciplines, which is why I say, there is no north, no south, when it comes to virtues and vices of human nature. So I'm not saying South is better than the North, but reparations are foundational to civilization; enlightenment was born in the South of Earth - math, medicine, poetry, philosophy, theology, almost everything was invented in the South, then the Northerners barged in, and pretended they invented astrophysics. I come from the other half of the world that has been systematically reduced to footnotes of northernized history normalized as world history, now I am a bigger giant than all your white giants combined, now I speak, and you listen.”