Thank you! Don't forget to confirm subscription in your email.
When you get just a complete sense of blackness or void ahead of you, that somehow the future looks an impossible place to be, and the direction you are going seems to have no purpose, there is this word despair which is a very awful thing to feel.
My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my 'blackness' than ever before. I have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don't belong.
The rising sun can dispel the darkness of night, but it cannot banish the blackness of malice, hatred, bigotry, and selfishness from the hearts of humanity.
As the blackness of the night recedes so does the nadir of yesterday. The child I am forgets so quickly.
There are no black conservatives. Oh, there are neoconservatives with black skin, but they lack any claim to blackness other than the biological. They have forgotten their roots.
Part of writing a novel is being willing to leap into the blackness. You have very little idea, really, of what's going to happen. You have a broad sense, maybe, but it's this rash leap.
No one tells every white person in this country how to be. No one tells every Hispanic, or Asian or Jewish person in this country how to be. There is no single definition of whiteness or single definition of blackness.
In our music, in our everyday life, there are so many negative things. Why not have something positive and stamp it with blackness?
Blackness is a state of mind, and I identify with the black community. Mainly, because I realized, early on, when I walk into a room, people see a black woman, they don't see a white woman. So out of that reason alone, I identify more with the black community.
It was jarring to be berated for 'acting white' when I was placed in a predominantly black middle school in Southern California. I was also chubby, into boys who weren't into me, and tried too hard to fit into this 'blackness' I was supposed to be.
