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Quote by Percival Everett

“Across the water was a town and I guessed, from all I'd heard, that it might be Cairo. I wished that had mattered. A fugitive slave was a slave in a free state just the same.”

Quote by Percival Everett

Book:James
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James

James is a fictional narrative that delves into the complexities of human nature, focusing on the protagonist's journey towards self-discovery and understanding. more

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Percival Everett

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“So I would invent her thoughts, plumb them for a subtext that was historically true in essence, but not strictly factual in order to relate her history to contemporary issues about freedom responsibility, and woman's "place." The heroine would represent the unapologetic acceptance of shame and terror; assume the consequences of choosing infanticide; claim her own freedom. The terrain, slavery, was formidable and pathless.”

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Book:Beloved
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“I did it, I got us all out. Without Halle too. Up till then it was the only thing I ever did on my own. Decided. And it came off right, like it was supposed to. We was here. Each and every one of my babies and me too. I birthed them and I got em out and it wasn't no accident. I did that. I had help, of course, lots of that, but still it was me doing it; me saying, *Go on*, and *Now*. Me having to look out. Me using my own head. But it was more than that. It was a kind of selfishness I never knew nothing about before. It felt good. Good and right. I was big, Paul D, and deep and wide and when I stretched out my arms all my children could get in between. I was *that* wide. Look like I loved em more after I got here. Or maybe I couldn't love em proper in Kentucky because they wasn't mine to love. But when I got here, when I jumped down off that wagon-there wasn't nobody in the world I couldn't love if I wanted to. You know what I mean?”

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Book:Beloved
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