New People QUOTES

1 " When there is a gap—between your face and your race, between the baby and the mother, between your body and yourself—you are expected, everywhere you go, to explain the gap. "

― Danzy Senna , New People

3 " and very carefully to them the truth of what you know, but with kindness in your heart. Have compassion for them, because not everybody starts on an equal playing field. Love, Gloria "

― Danzy Senna , New People

5 " something—to make something right and final—is to kill it. "

― Danzy Senna , New People

7 " Don't hate white people. They can't help it. They have a learning disability. They need your compassion. They need accommodations. They are like preschoolers--their understanding of race is so basic. They can't be faulted for being uncomfortable with somebody who has what amounts to a graduate degree in race--that is, us. It's not fair for preschoolers to be placed in the same classroom with graduate students and be forced to compete. Pity them, Maria. Take their hands and explain very slowly and very carefully to them the truth of what you know, but with kindness in your heart. Have compassion for them, because not everybody starts on an equal playing field. "

― Danzy Senna , New People

9 " She is beginning to understand that completion is not so much about reaching perfection as it is making the choice to look away from the material. What was it Khalil used to say when she couldn't finish a paper in college? Be a completionist, not a perfectionist. Gloria was a perfectionist. It wasn't that she didn't have the stamina to finish her dissertation on Zora Neale Hurston and the triple consciousness of black women protagonists; it was that she could not tear herself away from the material. She couldn't bear to leave Janie behind. Because Gloria understood that to finish something–to make something right and final–is to kill it. "

― Danzy Senna , New People