Eve Ewing Quotes

Those who move with courage make the path for those who live in fear.

If he don't ever buy you nothing and I mean nothing - I don't mean your birthstone, I don't mean groceries, even - I mean if he don't buy you an ice-cream cone, I mean if he don't buy you time when you had none, I mean if he don't buy your fantastic tales, calls them nonsense, then he's gotta go.

I think that maybe if we can guard ourselves and each other, if we can keep from losing our minds alone in quiet rooms and can at least lose them side by side, we may live through the year.

How many iambs to be a real human girl? Which turn of phrase evidence a righteous heart? If I know of Ovid, may I keep my children?

Afrofuturism is the premise that Black people exist in the future.

We came here head to toe and now we are millions and now we demand to sit upright

love is like a comic book. it’s fragile and the best we can do is protect it in whatever clumsy ways we can: plastic and cardboard, dark rooms and boxes. in this way, something never meant to last might find its way to another decade, another home, an attic, a basement, intact. love is paper.

Ever since black people came to this country we have needed a Moses. There has always been so much water that needs parting. It seems like all black children, from the time we are born, come into the world in the midst of a rushing current that threatens to swallow us whole if we don't heed the many, many warnings we are told to heed. We come into the world as alchemists of the water, bending it, willing it to bear us safe passage and cleanse us along the way, to teach us to move with joy and purpose and to never, ever stop flowing forward into something grand waiting at the other end of the delta. We're a people forever in exodus. Before Moses there was Abraham, and ever since black people came to this country we have needed an Abraham. We have always been sending each other away -- for our own good, don't you know it -- and calling each other back, finding kinship where a well springs from tears. We are masters of the art of sacrifice; no one is more skilled at laying their greatest beloveds on the altar and feeling certainty even as we feel sorrow. And when we see the ram, we know how to act fast, and prosper, even as the stone knife warms in our hands.

Then she picked up her toolbox and walked heavily out of the apartment, closing the front door behind her.

One metaphor we can use to understand these two ideas is riding a horse. Many people believe racism is like a skilled equestrian’s choosing, through decisions and commands, to go faster or slower, to jump a fence or avoid an obstacle, to follow a certain route or not. However, thinking structurally, we can understand that racism is more like a merry-go-round. You may be going up, down, and around, and you might feel as if you’re riding

No matter how much we think we know someone, we can never read their mind.

His work asks not, as much criticism does, what is happening here, but rather, what does this work mean? What is it doing in the world?

I mean it when I say hallelujah. I don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the holy son of God, or that he died so that mankind could be saved from our sins, or that he was resurrected as our messiah. But I believe in messiahs. I believe in miracles and hexes, curses and omens, I believe that you should never put your purse on the floor or split a pole, and when I’m feeling aimless I can fall for a little bit of ill-informed astrology. I don’t step on cracks. I believe in an infinite, mysterious universe, and I believe that that universe is mostly dark matter, and that one day the sun will implode. And I don’t expect that I’ll be alive to see it, but if I am, I will look up at that star I have known and loved more than any other star, and I will say “oh, lord Jesus,” and I will be talking about Black Jesus. When I say hallelujah, I mean it. I really mean it.

I pulled the song up and we sang it together, and for the moment that was our highway.

As told in the history we learn in schools and on television and in the news, the work of social transformation often sidelines narratives of care or omits them altogether. The world is changed, we are told, when the loudest people talk the most and fight the hardest and come up with the best ideas. And that, indeed, can be important work. But care work --asking basic questions like, *Has everyone been fed? Do people have a safe place to sleep? Is there safe and reliable childcare? Are we attending to everyone's health?* --not only provides the necessary conditions for all the other stuff to happen; it is *also* a form of stitching together microcosms of a more just and loving world. Eve Ewing Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism