“If I could take all my parts with me when I go somewhere / and not have to say to one of them, ‘No, you stay home tonight, you won’t be welcome’/ because I’m going to an all-white party where I can be gay but not Black / Or I’m going to a Black poetry reading, and half the poets are anti-homosexual / or thousands of situations where something of what I am cannot come with me / The day all the different parts of me can come along / we would have what I would call / a revolution” IfsI CanDifferentHomeReadingBlackWhitePartyHalfSituationPoetRevolutionGayWelcomeIf I CouldTonightBlack PeopleHomosexualityHomosexualGay PrideLesbianismAnti GayAnti DiscriminationPoetry Reading Author:Pat Parker
“Now I see why reading was illegal for black people during slavery. I discover that I think in words. The more words I know, the more things I can think about. My vocab and thoughts grow together like the stem and petals of a flower. Reading was illegal because if you limit someone's vocab, you limit their thoughts. They can't even think of freedom because they don't have the language to.” PeopleIfsThinkingKnowsI CanTogetherReadingLanguageGrowsBlackFlowerLimitsSlaveryIllegalBlack PeopleStemPetals Author:M. K. Asante
“The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.” WritingLittlesBookStoriesReadingBlackReaderMarkWoodsWriters And WritingWriting By WritersPulpStory WritingWriting StoriesCreativity And WritingStory WritersUnread Books Book:Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places Source: Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places
“Mr. Pickwick took a seat and the paper, but instead of reading the latter, peeped over the top of it, and took a survey of the man of business, who was an elderly, pimply-faced, vegetable-diet sort of man, in a black coat, dark mixture trousers, and small black gaiters; a kind of being who seemed to be an essential part of the desk at which he was writing, and to have as much thought or sentiment.” MenWritingKindCharacterReadingBlackDarkInterestingHe ManEssentialsPaperDietsSeatsLatterSentimentsVegetablesDesksCoatsMixturesElderlySurveysOver The TopTrousersInteresting Characters Book:The posthumous papers of the Pickwick Club Source: The posthumous papers of the Pickwick Club
“We live in a highly industrialized society and every member of the Black nation must be as academically and technologically developed as possible. To wage a revolution, we need competent teachers, doctors, nurses, electronics experts, chemists, biologists, physicists, political scientists, and so on and so forth. Black women sitting at home reading bedtime stories to their children are just not going to make it.” NeedsChildrenStoriesHomePoliticalReadingNationsBlackTeacherRevolutionMembersSittingDoctorsScientistExpertsNurseBlack WomenPhysicistCompetentBedtimeBiologistChemistElectronicsBedtime Stories Author:Frances M. Beal
“Our leaders were assassinated, one of the things I was reading today was - 28 Panthers were killed by the police but 300 Black Panthers were killed by other Panthers just within - internecine warfare. It just began to seem like we were in an impossible task given what we were facing.” SeemsTodayReadingGivenBlackLeaderImpossibleTasksPoliceWarfarePanthersBlack Panther Author:Angela Davis
“I barely read. I'm not a good reader at all. Rather than reading, I used to sit in front of the TV and watch black-and-white cowboy movies. I'm a painfully slow reader. It's really bad as an actor, because you have to read a lot of scripts. It takes me like an average of three hours to read a script, which is pretty poor.” UsedThreeReadingActorsBlackHoursWhitePoorWatchesFrontsTvsReaderAverageScriptsTake MeBlack And WhiteCowboyCowboy Movie Author:Will Poulter