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61 " I let go of a breath I didn't know I'd been holding. I don't know much about pathogens and storing sugar, but damn if I don't know how to cook good food that makes people hungry for more, that makes people remember food is meant to feed more than an empty belly. It's also meant to nourish your heart. And that's one thing you won't ever learn from no textbook. "
― Elizabeth Acevedo , With the Fire on High
62 " You're the author on your own life story. "
63 " We all smile at Babygirl, who shows off her teeth as if she knows she has a coven of women holding her down, and that she can be anything and everything we dream for her. "
64 " I feel like the sunlight sneaking over the hill is also sneaking inside me. "
65 " People say that you’re stuck with the family you’re born into. And for most people, that’s probably true. But we all make choices about people. Who you want to hold close, who we want to remain in our lives, and who we are just fine without. "
66 " And I try to tell myself the same thing: forward is the only direction to go in; turning back around is for the birds. "
67 " Doesn’t she know I still need her? That I still wish someone would look at the pieces of my life and tell me how to make sure they all fit back together? "
68 " sometimes focusing on what you can control is the only way to lessen the pang in your chest when you think about the things you can’t. "
69 " The whole of me is black. The whole of me is whole. "
70 " I wanted to give Babygirl a nice name. The kind of name that doesn’t tell you too much before you meet her, the way mine does. Because nobody ever met a white girl named Emoni, and as soon as they see my name on a résumé or college application they think they know exactly what kind of girl they getting. They know way more about me than they need to know, and shit—I mean, shoot—information ain’t free, so my daughter’s name isn’t going to tell anybody any information they didn’t earn. "
71 " Shit, that smile should come with a trigger warning. "
72 " As if my Puerto Rican side cancels out any Blackness, "
73 " As if my Puerto Rican side cancels out any Blackness, although if we go only according to skin, my Puerto Rican side is as Black as my Black American side. "
74 " I’m constantly having to give people geography and history lessons on how my grandmother’s hometown is 65 percent Afro–Puerto Rican, on how the majority of slaves were dropped off in the Caribbean and Latin America, on how just because our Black comes with bomba and mofongo doesn’t mean it isn’t valid. And it seems I’m always defending the parts of me that I’ve inherited from my mother: "
75 " The world is a turntable that never stops spinning; as humans we merely choose the tracks we want to sit out and the ones that inspire us to dance" -Emoni "
76 " And anyone who wants to get to know me has to know how to appreciate multiple skylines. "
77 " This stuff is complicated. But it’s like I’m some long-division problem folks keep wanting to parcel into pieces, and they don’t hear me when I say: I don’t reduce, homies. The whole of me is Black. The whole of me is whole. "
78 " Cooking class? No. *This* is a culinary arts class. As in, this is about creativity, and heart, and science - an art form. And no artist begins a masterpiece without understanding their tools and their medium. Anyone can teach you how to cook; you can google that. If you want to learn how to make art, stay here" -Chef Ayden "
79 " The closer we get to graduation, the more I feel like I want to be doing, not spending four years pretending to do. "
80 " I've had a lot of things to feel ashamed about and I've learned most of them are other people's problems, not mine" -Emoni "
