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Quote by Edward E. Baptist

“Before the Haitian Revolution, Africans toiling in the sugar fields of Saint-Domingue spread the story of the zombi. This was a living-dead person who had been captured by white wizards. Intellect and personality fled home, but the ghost-spirit and body remained in the land of the dead, working at the will of the sorcerers-planters. Any slave could be a zombi..." - The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism”

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Edward E. Baptist

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“Years later, she remembered her zombie days.... No name turned the key to her prison.... So in the land of the dead the men sang to her. The sound faded across the rows of plants. The dusty mechanism of her arms rose and fell.... At last they tried a new tune whose tune carried across the gray field. Hair as black as coal in the mine, little Liza Jane / Eyes so large and big and fine, little Liza Jane. You are beautiful. We need you. You cannot go where you are trying to go. Come back to us.... You plant a patch of cotton, I'll plant a patch of cane / I'm gonna make molasses, to sweeten Liza Jane... Sobs began to heave out of her mouth... Oh Lisa, poor gal, Oh Liza Jane / Oh Liza poor gal, she died on the trail. Liza, the sang. Lucy raised her head. Tears flowed down her face and she opened her mouth: 'I got happy,' Lucy Thompson remembered eighty years after her resurrection, 'and sang with the rest.'" - The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism”

Slavery History
Author:Edward E. Baptist
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“Então Úrsula, a pobre órfã, ajoelhou aos pés do leito, e volvendo em seus braços o corpo inanimado, com seus lábios, trêmulos de dor, tocou os lábios frios e inertes de sua mãe, tentando, embalde, transmitir ao coração materno o hálito ardente, que a animava. Mas quando voltou à realidade, quando teve plena consciência de que estava só, e entregue ao rigor da sua sorte, quando pôde acreditar que sua mãe já não existia, então prorrompeu em lágrimas, e estorceu-se pelo chão, e agitou-se como uma possessa, porque as grandes e profundas dores do coração só acham alívio na expansão ilimitada da dor, e na fadiga do corpo e do espírito...”

Black AuthorBrazilian LiteratureSlavery HistoryRead WomenXix Century
Book:Úrsula
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“Pretenderá em vão lutar contra a tua vontade, e nunca te poderá arrancar da alma a sublime afeição, que deste a outrem. Louco! A mulher só ama uma vez. No seu coração imprimiu Deus um sentir tão puro e tão verdadeiro, que o homem não pode duvidar dos seus afetos. E a mulher cumpre na terra sua missão de amor e de paz; e depois de a ter cumprido volta ao céu; porque ela passou no mundo à semelhança de um anjo consolador. Esta é a mulher. Mas aquela, cujas formas eram tão sedutoras, tão belas, aquela, cujas aparências mágicas e arrebatadoras escondiam um coração árido de afeições puras, e desinteressadas... Oh! Essa não compreendeu para que veio habitar entre os homens; porque a cobiça hedionda envenenou-lhe os nobres sentimentos do coração. O brilho do ouro deslumbrou-a, e ela vendeu seu amor ao primeiro que lho ofereceu. Maldição!... Infâmia sobre a mulher que não compreendeu a sua honrosa missão, e trocou por outro os sublimes afetos da sua alma.”

Black AuthorBrazilian LiteratureSlavery HistoryRead WomenXix Century
Book:Úrsula
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“They would come with languages that sounded like dog bark; with a childish hunger for animal fur. They would forever fence land, ship whole trees to faraway countries, take any woman for quick pleasure, ruin soil, befoul sacred places and worship a dull, unimaginative god. They let their hogs browse the ocean shore turning it into dunes of sand where nothing green can ever grow again. Cut loose from the earth's soul, they insisted on purchase of its soil, and like all orphans they were insatiable. It was their destiny to chew up the world and spit out a horribleness that would destroy all primary peoples.”

RacismColonialismWhite PeopleSlavery History
Book:A Mercy
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“Now I have very little respect for the electoral system in the United States. I could have respected it in the early days, when the country was small and we had small population. The system that we have in the United States was set up at a time when the total population was the population of Tennessee. We've stretched it to try to make it work for different kind of problems and in stretching and adapting it, we've lost its meaning. We still have the form but not the meaning. There's a lot of things that we have to look at critically that might have been useful at one time that are no longer useful I think there's some good in everything. There's some bad in everything. But there's so little good in some things that you know for practical purposes they're useless. They're beyond salvation. There's so much good in some things, even though there's bad, that we build on that.”

PoliticsDemocracyProgressFacadesElectoral System
Book:We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change
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