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Quote by Steven Ramirez

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Tell Me When I'm Dead

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Steven Ramirez

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“Sometimes I still feel that there are two of me: one clean, flawless picture, the other imperfect and cracked; one boy, one girl; one voice that speaks aloud and one that whispers in my ear; one publicly known to have been troubled but be on the mend, the other who has privately lost something to do with innocence and gained something to do with knowledge and adulthood that can never be undone. I feel sometimes there are things that tear me in two directions, that there are two sets of thoughts that grow side by side. But then I realize that I am whole, whatever that means and does not mean; I am complete without the need for additions or alteration.”

“عندما بلغتُ الخامسة والعشرين احتفلتُ واحتفل بى أصدقائى، وقلت لهم بصوت سكران: أمهلونى حتى الثلاثين، وفى الثلاثين لم أحتفل وأمهلت نفسى حتى الخامسة والثلاثين، وها قد تجاوزت منتصف المهلة الثانية ولا شىء تغير سوى شعرى الذى اكتسب بياضاً وراثياً جاءنى مبكراً كأنما ليزيد من وطأة الزمن، أكبرُ بلا مجد ولا أطفال، وتقولين يا أمى لا تسأل ولا تزور. أى خيبة تريدين أن أحمل إليك؟.”

“You taste injustice, even if it’s fictional, really taste it,it has a way of doing that. Sometimes, you can never put the shoe on the other foot. We can’t go back in time and know what it was like to be a black person then. Even today, when things are supposed to be so much better, not one of you can understand what it’s like to be black, to live with the knowledge of what happened to your ancestry and still face injustice. But that book makes us taste it and, reading it, we know how bitter that taste is and we know we don’t like it. But that bitter wakes you up, and when you wake up, you open your mind to things in this world, you make yourself think. Then you’ll decide you don’t like the taste of injustice, not for you and not for anyone, and you’ll understand that even though all the battles can’t be won, that doesn’t mean you won’t fight.”