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Quote by Rita Williams-Garcia

“There is something about sudden darkness in a classroom of twenty-four sixth graders that sets off mischief. There was giggling on one side of the room. Spitballs on the other.”

Quote by Rita Williams-Garcia

Book:P.S. Be Eleven

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Rita Williams-Garcia

Rita Williams-Garcia is an American writer known for her young adult literature. Her works often explore issues of race, class, and gender, and are highly appreciated by readers. more

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Book:P.S. Be Eleven

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“He was horrible to me," I say firmly. Mama waves a hand. "That doesn't mean anything. You know, they say boys are meanest to the girls they like the best." "I hate that saying. Meanness is meanness. To tell a girl that there's some sort of benevolent action behind it all is to say that it's okay for her to be victimized." Mama stares up at me for a moment, then shakes her head. "You're right, pumpkin. I don't know why I said that." JoJo snorts again. Because you and I were raised with 'boys will be boys' tossed in our faces." She sits back in her chair and turns her face to the sunlight. "I say it should be 'dicks will be dicks, and a misbehaving dick deserves a knee to the balls.”

Childhood Bully Past Trauma

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“when your mother is your first love, you can search to the ends of the earth and never find any love comparable. when your mother is your first heartbreak, no love will ever fill the void of feeling so unloved by her”

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Source: My Father's Eyes, My Mother's Rage

“If I was the President, I’d make a law to shut up all boys till they were grown, for they certainly are the most provoking toads in the world.”

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“Yet all the fun we had riding bicycles and kicking soccer balls counted for nothing because they were in here working, wearing paper hats and striped aprons as if they were in an Archie comic. They were already kids and we were still children.”

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Book:Portrait with Keys: The City of Johannesburg Unlocked

Source: Portrait with Keys: The City of Johannesburg Unlocked

“He was one of the fortunate ones. He'd emerged from childhood a whole person and his past wasn't some vast immovable mass with its own weather system.”

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“Excerpts from an autobiography I’ll never write: Around the time I was nine years old, I carried around a marble notebook everywhere I went. It had the words, “The Purpose of Life” written in sharpie where my name should’ve been. That notebook was sacred to me. I had conjured up this belief that I’d inevitably be whisked away into the afterlife once I fully discovered and was able to coherently express the “purpose of life” on those pages. In a most whimsical, literal and childlike way, I believed that there simply would no longer be a point to my existence. This wasn’t cynical or depressive at all, it just seemed… logical. Like when a student finishes their test before everyone else so they get to leave the room and go play or do whatever else they want. My notebook was filled with synonyms. I’ve always loved synonyms. I once tried to list out every single word I knew in the English language. You can imagine how overwhelming it was when I realized that one word would remind me of twenty others… That’s when I learned just how expansive this world is. I found that when small ripples turned into tsunamis of information in my mind, I felt most alive and my curiosity grew and grew. It was then I also discovered my love for figuratively drowning in words. I never finished that notebook. I decided right then that I’d pretend not to know the answers so I’d get to stay a little longer.”

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“So you know that feeling, (...) when life has been poisoned by something, right from the start. Like black liquid poured into a basin of clean water.”

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