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Some Trick: Thirteen Stories

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Helen DeWitt

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“The dignities of Unas will not be taken from him, For he has swallowed the knowledge of every god; Unas's lifetime is forever, his limit is eternity In his dignity of "If-he-likes-he-does if-he-hates-he-does-not," As he dwells in lightland for all eternity. Lo, their power is in Unas's belly, Their spirits are before Unas as broth of the gods, Cooked for Unas from their bones. Lo, their power is with Unas, Their shadows (are taken) from their owners, For Unas is of those who risen is risen, lasting lasts. Not can evildoers harm Unas's chosen seat Among the living in this land for all eternity! Utterances 273·274 Antechamber, East WaU The king feeds on the gods”

GodKnowledgeDignityEternityUnas
Book:Ancient Egyptian Literature, Volume I: The Old and Middle Kingdoms
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“I couldn’t articulate how the name made me feel. Shawn had meant it to humiliate me, to lock me in time, into an old idea of myself. But far from fixing me in place, that word transported me. Every time he said it—“Hey Nigger, raise the boom” or “Fetch me a level, Nigger”—I returned to the university, to that auditorium, where I had watched human history unfold and wondered at my place in it. The stories of Emmett Till, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King were called to my mind every time Shawn shouted, “Nigger, move to the next row.” I saw their faces superimposed on every purlin Shawn welded into place that summer, so that by the end of it, I had finally begun to grasp something that should have been immediately apparent: that someone had opposed the great march toward equality; someone had been the person from whom freedom had to be wrested. I did not think of my brother as that person; I doubt I will ever think of him that way. But something had shifted nonetheless. I had started on a path of awareness, had perceived something elemental about my brother, my father, myself. I had discerned the ways in which we had been sculpted by a tradition given to us by others, a tradition of which we were either willfully or accidentally ignorant. I had begun to understand that we had lent our voices to a discourse whose sole purpose was to dehumanize and brutalize others—because nurturing that discourse was easier, because retaining power always feels like the way forward.”

FreedomEducationPowerAwarenessIgnoranceRacismDignityEquality
Book:Educated
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“For this is your home, my friend, do not be driven from it; great men have done great things here, and will again, and we can make America what America must become. It will be hard, James, but you come from sturdy, peasant stock, men who picked cotton and dammed rivers and built railroads, and, in the teeth of the most terrifying odds, achieved an unassailable and monumental dignity.”

AmericaDignitySlaveryCivil RightsRacism In AmericaBlack In America
Book:The Fire Next Time
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