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Homegoing QUOTES

Homegoing QUOTES

1 " We someone does wrong, whether it is you or me, whether it is mother or father, whether it is the Gold Coast man or the white man, it is like a fisherman casting a net into the water. He keeps only the one or two fish that he needs to feed himself and puts the rest in the water, thinking that their lives will go back to normal. No one forgets that they were once captive, even if they are now free. "

― Yaa Gyasi , Homegoing

2 " Once the woman decided to get free, she had also decided to stay free... The older Jo =got, the more he understood about the woman he called Ma. The more he understood that sometimes staying free required unimaginable sacrifice. "

― Yaa Gyasi , Homegoing

3 " A little black child fighting in her sleep against an opponent she couldn't name come morning because in the light that opponent just looked like the world around her. Intangible evil. Unspeakable unfairness. Beulah ran in her sleep, ran like she'd stolen something, when really she had done nothing other than expect the peace, the clarity, that came with dreaming. Yes, Jo thought, this was where it started, but when, where, did it end? "

― Yaa Gyasi , Homegoing

4 " But if we do not like the person we have learned to be, should we just sit in front of our fufu, doing nothing? I think, James, that maybe it is possible to make a new way. "

― Yaa Gyasi , Homegoing

5 " The white man's god is just like the white man. He thinks he is the only god, just like the white man thinks he is the only man. But the only reason he is god instead of Nyame or Chukwu or whoever is because we let him be. We do not fight him. We do not even question him. The white man told us he was the way, and we said yes, but when has the white man ever told us something was good for us and tat thing was really good? "

― Yaa Gyasi , Homegoing

6 " History is Storytelling. "

― Yaa Gyasi , Homegoing

7 " This is the problem of history. We cannot know that which we were not there to see and hear and experience for ourselves. We must rely upon the words of others. Those who were there in the olden days, they told stories to the children so that the children would know, so that the children could tell stories to their children. And so on, and so on. "

― Yaa Gyasi , Homegoing

8 " As long as he lived, it would always be a pleasure and a gift to fill his hands with the weight of her flesh. "

― Yaa Gyasi , Homegoing

9 " Maybe he wouldn't end up the kind of man who needed to use his body for work. Maybe he'd be a new kind of black man altogether, one who got to use his mind. "

― Yaa Gyasi , Homegoing

10 " Prayer was not a sacred or holy thing. It was not spoken plainly, in Twi or English. It need not be performed on the knees or with folded palms. For Akua, prayer was a frenzied chant, a language for those desires of the heart that even the mind did not recognize were there. "

― Yaa Gyasi , Homegoing

11 " We are all weak most of the time,' she said finally. 'Look at the baby. Born to his mother, he learns how to eat from her, how to walk, talk, hunt, run. He does not invent new ways. He just continues with the old. This is how we all come to the world, James. Weak and needy, desperate to learn how to be a person.' She smiled at him. 'But if we do not like the person we have learned to be, should we just sit in front of our fufu, doing nothing? I think, James, that maybe it is possible to make a new way. "

― Yaa Gyasi , Homegoing

12 " Evil is like a shadow. It follows you. "

― Yaa Gyasi , Homegoing

13 " We can’t go back to something we ain’t never been to in the first place. It ain’t ours anymore. This is. "

― Yaa Gyasi , Homegoing

14 " ... as a reminder that a white man could still kill him for nothing. "

― Yaa Gyasi , Homegoing

15 " he knew in his body, even if he hadn’t yet put it together in his mind, that in America the worst thing you could be was a black man. Worse than dead, you were a dead man walking. "

― Yaa Gyasi , Homegoing

16 " No one forgets that they were once captive, even if they are now free. "

― Yaa Gyasi , Homegoing

17 " They'd heard it all, but hadn't they earned their freedom? The days of running through forests and living under floorboards. Wasn't that the price they had paid? "

― Yaa Gyasi , Homegoing

18 " Og hvis han hamrede bogen ned i bordet, ville alle i rummet glo, og de ville ikke se andet end hans hudfarve og hans vrede, og så ville de tro, de vidste noget om ham, og det ville være det samme noget, som havde legitimeret at smide hans oldefar H i fængsel, men det ville også være anderledes, mindre åbenlyst, end det engang var. "

― Yaa Gyasi , Homegoing

19 " When Marjorie had asked her father again when he had known he liked Esther, he said he had always known. He said it was born in him, that he breathed it in with the first breeze of Edweso, that it moved in him like the harmattan. "

― Yaa Gyasi , Homegoing

20 " But Jo wasn't angry. Not anymore. He couldn't really tell if what he had been before was angry. It was an emotion he had no use for, that accomplished nothing and meant even less than that. If anything, what Jo really felt was tired. "

― Yaa Gyasi , Homegoing