Jason Reynolds Quotes

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.

You can't run away from who you are, but what you can do is run toward who you want to be.

ANOTHER THING ABOUT THE RULES They weren't meant to be broken. They were meant for the broken to follow.

Had our hearts really become so numb that we needed dead bodies in order to feel the beat of compassion in our chests? Who am I if I need to be shocked back into my best self?

People always love people more when they're dead.

but if blood inside you is on the inside of someone else, you never want to see it on the outside of them

Dreams don't have timelines, deadlines, and aren't always in straight lines.

History can only teach its lesson if it is remembered.

AND YOU KNOW it's weird to know a person you don't know and at the same time not know a person you know, you know?

MY MOTHER USED TO SAY, I know you're young, gotta get it out, but just remember, when you're walking in the nighttime, make sure the nighttime ain't walking into you.

Trouble is, you can't run away from yourself." Coach snatched the towel from his shoulder, folded into a perfect square, and set it in the space between us. "Unfortunately," he said, "ain't nobody that fast.

When bad things happen we can usually look up and see the moon, big and bright, shining over us. That always made me feel better. Like there's something up there beaming down on us in the dark.

Little. Don't ever let someone call your life, your dreams, little. Hear me?

Because racism was alive and real as shit. It was everywhere and all mixed up in everything, and the only people who said it wasn’t, and the only people who said, “Don’t talk about it” were white. Well, stop lying. That’s what I wanted to tell those people. Stop lying. Stop denying. That’s why I was marching. Nothing was going to change unless we did something about it. We! White people!

Sometimes, when people get treated as less than human, the best way to help them feel better is to simply treat them as human. Not as victims. Just you as you. Rashad Butler, before all this.

ALIVE = A VEIL

I SWEAR SOMETIMES it feels like God be flashing photos of his children, awkward, amazing, tucked in his wallet for the world to see. But the world don't wanna see no kids, and God ain't no pushy parent so he just folds and snaps us shut.

I wanted him to know that I saw him, a guy who, even with a tear-streaked face, seemed to have two tiny smiles framing his eyes like parentheses, a guy on the ground pantomiming his death to remind the world he was alive.

Buck laughed, and laughter, when it's loud and heavy and aimed at you, I think can feel just as bad as a bullet's bang." -Will

Shawn turned back toward me, eyes dull from death but shining from tears, finally spoke to me. Just two words, like a joke he'd been saving. YOU COMING?

Nobody says the words anymore, but somehow the violence still remains. If I didn’t want the violence to remain, I had to do a hell of a lot more than just say the right things and not say the wrong things.

The most addictive drug known to America. Racism. It causes wealth, an inflated sense of self, and hallucinations.

Your dream is the mole behind your ear, that chip in your front tooth, your freckles. It's the thing that makes you special, but not the thing that makes you great. The courage in trying, the passion in living, and the acknowledgement and appreciation of the beauty happening around you does that.

ANAGRAM is when you take a word and rearrange the letters to make another word. And sometimes the words are still somehow connected ex: CANOE = OCEAN. Same letters, different words, somehow still make sense together, like brothers.

...death isn't bad. It's not. It's just that life is so good. So damn good that you just wanna hold on to it, and everybody in it. But we can't. But what we can do, is appreciate it more. Y'know, smell the flowers.

We can't attack a thing we don't know. That's dangerous. And...foolish. It would be like trying to chop down a tree from the top of it. If we understand how the tree works, how the trunk and roots are where the power lies, and how gravity is on our side, we can attack it, each of us with small axes, and change the face of the the forest.

How do you small-talk your father when "dad" is a language so foreign that whenever you try to say it, it feels like you got a third lip and a second tongue?

AND EVEN THOUGH his face was wet with tears he wasn't supposed to cry when he was alive, I couldn't see him as anything less than my brother, my favorite, my only.

There will come a time when we will love humanity, when we will gain the courage to fight for an equitable society for our beloved humanity, knowing, intelligently, that when we fight for humanity, we are fighting for ourselves.

People always love people more when they are dead.

Shawn's dead. So strange to say. So sad. But I guess not surprising, which I guess is even stranger, and even sadder.

But if the blood inside you is on the inside of someone else, you never want to see it on the outside of them.

You, my dear, should spend more time in a library. It's not just a hiding place, but also the place where the chases happen.

I FELT LIKE CRYING which felt like another person trapped behind my face tiny fists punching the backs of my eyes feet kicking my throat at the spot where the swallow starts. Stay put, I whispered to him, Stay strong, I whispered to me. Because crying is against The Rules.

A BROKEN HEART killed my dad. That's why my mother always said. And as a kid I always figured his heart was forreal broken like an arm or a toy or the middle drawer.

Because for something to make you feel tough, you gotta be a little bit scared of it at first. Then you gotta beat it." -Ghost

In 2012, in the United Kingdom, the number of people (regardless of race) shot and killed by police officers: 1 In 2013, in the United Kingdom, the number of times police officers fired guns in the line of duty/the number of people fatally shot: 3/0 In the United States, in the seven year period ending in 2012, a white police officer killed a black person nearly two times a week. “I’m not much of a talker,” she finished up. “You know that. But I know numbers. The numbers don’t lie, kids. The numbers always tell a story.

Weird talking to my dad like he was a stranger even though we hugged like family.

At sixteen I though Iwould've made it by now. Now I'm making up what making it means as i go.

...nobody owes you anything, so when you get something, be appreciative.

Like I was holding my breath. Maybe I was. Maybe I was hoping I could give some back to Shawn.

There are lazy, hardworking, wise, unwise, harmless, and harmful individuals of every race, but no racial group is better or worse than another racial group in any way.

in the mirror my face sagged, like sadness was trying to pull the skin off

I do believe we can do better, be better. But we can't hide behind fear. We can't tuck truth between the cushions of comfort. We have to deal with it, really confront it, so that our children can live with a lot less weight. We owe it to them.

Science says the races are biologically equal so if they're not in society, the only reason why can be racism.

THE INVENTION OF THE RULES ain't come from my brother, his friends, my dad, my uncle, the guys outside, the hustlers and shooters, and definitely not from me.

Just remember, when you're walking in the nighttime, make sure the nighttime ain't walking into you.

But you know how death is. Your body goes but your ideas don't. Your impact lingers on even when it's poisonous. Some bodies get put into the ground and daisies bloom. Others encourage the sprouting of weeds. Weeds that work to strangle whatever's living, and growing, around them.

One thing I am now certain of is that this road less traveled has in fact been traveled by far more suckers than you think. All of us out here, slumped over wearing weird fake broken smiles, trying to avoid the truth: That we all have road rage.

...and even though he said we were telling secrets that we were all going to keep, I had learned a long time ago that adults played by different rules.

MAYBE THERE'S SOMETHING INVISBLE trying to eat all of us as if we are beef.

If only is what's circling in my mind every morning before I breathe in beauty and breathe out bad decisions; If only is the cool breeze before I spin the world apart.

The sound you hear in your head, the one people call ears ringing, sounds less like a bell, and more like a flatline.

IS IT POSSIBLE for a huge to peel back skin of time, the toughened and raw bits, the irritated and irritating dry spots, the parts that bleed?

We had been texting for exactly thirteen minutes, asking random questions, trying to figure out if we knew any of the same people, or if we liked the same kind of music--the usual interview process you go through when you're trying to get the job as boyfriend.

Buck pressed his finger to my chest like he was pushing an elevator button. The L button. But you ain't got it in you, Will, he said, cocky. Your brother did, but you- you don't.

And sometimes,” he continued while flipping another one, “I can lose and lose and lose and I don’t know why. But there’s nothing I can do but just keep flipping the cards. Eventually, I’ll win again. As long as you got cards to keep turning, you’re fine. Now, that’s life,” he said, pushing another hand I won over to me.

Not like KKK racist," she said. "I don't think most people think they're racist. But every time something like this happens, you could, like you said, say, 'Not my problem.' You could say, 'It's a one-time thing.' Every time it happened.

Best to become invisible in times like these. Everybody knows that.

Show you that you can’t run away from who you are, but what you can do is run toward who you want to be.

Like, for me, the best way to describe it is, I got a lot of scream inside.

If people aren't careful, they can be tricked into believing a big deal, is a done deal. Like there's no more fight left. No reason to keep pushing. That freedom is an actual destination.

I felt good. I felt like, somehow, we were all winning.

So this was about you saving somebody, huh? Yeah, well, let me ask you something, Super Hero... Who’s gonna save you?

our dreams could be as far away as forever or as close as lunchtime.

Bullies should be snitched on, especially if you don’t feel like you can back them down.

PEOPLE ALWAYS SAID he was taught to do good but doing bad was in his blood. And there's that nighttime Mom always be talking about. It'll snatch your teaching from you, put a gun in your hand, a grumble in your gut, and some sharp in your teeth.

Racist ideas cause people to look at an innocent Black face and see a criminal.

And you know it's weird to know a person you don't know and at the same time not know a person you know, you know?" -Will

To know the past is to know the present. To know the present is to know yourself.

This is a roll call! SEAN BELL! Then she followed with “Absent again today! OSCAR GRANT! Absent again today! REKIA BOYD! Absent again today! RAMARLEY GRAHAM!” She paused, and at that point the rest of us knew exactly what to do. “Absent again today!” “AIYANA JONES!” “Absent again today!” “FREDDIE GRAY!” “Absent again today!” “MICHAEL BROWN!” “Absent again today!” “TAMIR RICE!” “Absent again today!” “ERIC GARNER!” “Absent again today!” “TARIKA WILSON!” “Absent again today!” And Spoony kept feeding Berry the papers, one after another, as she continued to read down the list of unarmed black people killed by the police.

Segregationists are haters. Like, real haters. People who hate you for not being like them. Assimilationists are people who like you, but only with quotation marks. Like…“ like” you. Meaning, they “like” you because you’re like them. And then there are antiracists. They love you because you’re like you.

Both the segregationists and the assimilationists think there is something wrong with Black people and that’s why Black people are on the lower and dying end of racial inequity. The assimilationists believe Black people as a group can be changed for the better, and the segregationists do not. The segregationists and the assimilationists are challenged by antiracists. The antiracists say there is nothing wrong or right about Black people and everything wrong with racism. The antiracists say racism is the problem in need of changing, not Black people. The antiracists try to transform racism. The assimilationists try to transform Black people. The segregationists try to get away from Black people.

And I'll never go asleep again believing that touching them or anything of his will lead to an arm around my neck. But it feels like an arm around my neck, wrenching, just thinking about how I'll never go to sleep again believing him or believing he will eventually come home, because he won't, and now I guess I should love him more, like he's my favorite, which is hard to do because he was my only brother, and already my favorite.

And then . . . BOOM!

DANI WAS DISAPPOINTED. Slapped her hands to her face, tried to wipe away worry. But she couldn't. And I couldn't expect her to.

What it was like to love something enough to do anything to come back to it.

Another thing about the rules They weren't meant to be broken. They were meant for the broken to follow" -Will

Mr. Ray had no problems opening the door, but he just couldn't close it, as my dad would say.

Turned out, freedom in America was like quicksand. It looked solid until a Black person tried to stand on it. Then it became clear that it was a sinkhole.

Thank you, young people. I wish I could name you all. But I'd rather you name yourselves.

When it comes to my dream, the way I like to describe it is that it's a rabid beast that found me when I was young

Pretended like yellow tape was some kind of neighborhood flag that don't nobody wave but always be flapping in the wind.

You can't be out there saving the world when your neighborhood ain't event straight.

Paul'd gotten it all wrong. Becoming a cop would not make him a hero- but what kind of cop he became could have.

IT'S UNCOMFORTABLE when you feel like like someone is looking at you but only when you not looking.

I screamed, pushed him away, yelled until my throat stripped, until my words became sizzle.

AND THERE HE WAS, clear as day as the door slid open. Recognized him instantly. Been waiting for him since I was three. Mikey Holloman. My father.

Fooled by racist ideas, I did not fully realize that the only thing wrong with Black people is that we think something is wrong with Black people. I did not fully realize that the only thing extraordinary about White people is that they think something is extraordinary about White people. There are lazy, hardworking, wise, unwise, harmless, and harmful individuals of every race, but no racial group is better or worse than another racial group in any way.

it was like the words came out and at the same time went in. Went down into me and chewed on everything inside as if I had somehow swallowed my own teeth and they were sharper than I'd ever known

What is it about adults that makes them all just say the same things? Like they all studied the same book about grown-up-ness, memorizing phrases like, *Does it make it right?* and *Be the bigger person*" -Ghost

Maybe you're eighteen and plan to make your first million by twenty-five (it's not impossible). Or maybe you're eighteen and plan to make it to twenty-one (it's not impossible, nor is twenty-two twenty-three twenty-four).

I should probably introduce myself. My name is Patina Jones. And I ain’t no junk. I also ain’t no hair flipper. And most of the girls at Chester Academy are hair flippers who be looking at me like my mom some kind of junk maker.

Because if it did- if it disappeared, if the voices vanished and you were no longer overtaken by the taunts of your own potential, no longer blinded by a perfect vision of your purpose, no longer engorged with passion- what would happen?

it would be the cornerstone of assimilationist thought, which basically said: Make yourself small, make yourself unthreatening, make yourself the same, make yourself safe, make yourself quiet, to make White people comfortable with your existence.

But do protests even work? I asked. I mean, I was all for the idea. I really was. But the only time I had ever heard about any protests actually working was Dr. King's. Thats it. Ain't never heard of no other ones making a difference. Berry stepped in. "They're a piece to the puzzle. I mean there are a lot of pieces, like reforming laws and things like that. But protests are what sends the message to the folks in power that something needs to change. That people are fed up, she explained. "We have a right to voice how we feel, and isn't that better than just doing nothing.

It all just depends. Some say on skill. Some say on will. Some say on luck. Some say on buck. Some say on race. Some say on face. Some say on Sunday God got a mighty, might plan. Nobody really knows what i depends on, but everybody knows it depends.

The first step to building an antiracist America is acknowledging America's racist past. By acknowledging America's racist past, we can acknowledge America's racist present. In acknowledging America's racist present, we can work toward building an antiracist America.

I mean, I had seen this happen so many times. Not personally, but on TV. In the news. People getting beaten, and sometimes killed, by the cops, and then there’s all this fuss about it, only to build up to a big heartbreak when nothing happens. The cops get off. And everybody cries and waits for the next dead kid, to do it all over again. That’s the way the story goes. A different kind of Lifetime movie. I didn’t want all that. Didn’t need it.

I felt like crying which felt like another person trapped behind my face tiny fists punching the backs of my eyes feet kicking my throat at the spot where the swallow starts.

Miles fired the shooter at the TV, a wad of web turning it on. Ganke shook his head. “So lazy.

We needed to talk, plain and simple. And seeing as through she was texting me, she clearly was opening the door. I just had to be man enough to walk through it.

Light always wins

I really, really didn’t. I just wanted him to stop beating me. I just wanted to live.

He always walks like the sidewalk was put there just for his feet.

Always always always be skeptical of a person who answers a question by asking a question. Usually usually usually it’s a setup.

How do you tell water ain't nothing funny about drowing?

Those that scar you are you.

Don't ever let someone call your life, your dreams, little." -Mr. Charles

it’s hard to think about kissing and killing at the same time.

Instead I just swallowed it all. And wished this was all some kind of invisible, pretend . . . something. But it wasn’t.

My dad’s in jail for trying to shoot me and my mother,” I blurted.

The squawking mockingbird had stopped its pecking and had transformed into a panther, brandishing teeth.

#460: Poop. Poop is stupid. Stupid poop. Stupid. Poopid. Poopidity. Is poopidity a word?

He said we all showed promise. Well, that was something I had never heard before. That I was showing promise.

UNCLE MARK PULLED ME IN for a hug, but how you hug what’s haunting you?

In Case you Ain't Know, gunshots make everybody deaf and blind especially when they make somebody dead. Best to become invisible in times like these. Everybody knows that. Even Tony flew away.

But I have to warn you: Scrolling will never be enough. Reposting will never be enough. Hashtagging will never be enough. Because hatred has a way of convincing us that half love is whole. What I mean by that is we—all of us—have to fight against performance and lean into participation. We have to be participants. Active. We have to be more than audience members sitting comfortably in the stands of morality, shouting, “WRONG!” That’s too easy. Instead, we must be players on the field, on the court, in our classrooms and communities, trying to do right. Because it takes a whole hand—both hands—to grab hold of hatred. Not just a texting thumb and a scrolling index finger.

I’d just circle the room, because when you keep moving, people think you going somewhere, like you on a mission and shouldn’t be bothered. Like you busy. And that’s better than people realizing that you not busy at all. That you not okay with lunchrooms that don’t have trays, and that ain’t big enough spaces to disappear in, and that don’t stink of week-old dirty mop water, which I now know is the familiar smell of love and friendship.

THE PLEDGE OF ANNOYANCE I pledge allegiance to the Flag and to these feet which I do drag And to the Republic for which it stands on my last nerve and my two hands With liberty and Justice for all, suspended for not playing small

IT’S SO WEIRD HOW A PERSON can be a normal part of your everyday life, and then just disappear. And when they do, you realize that some of those everyday things go with them. Like the smell of food cooking. Or the sound of Rick James, Frankie Beverly, or the Isley Brothers playing as background music in our house. The kettle, whistling. Water running in the kitchen sink. She was always at the kitchen sink, my mom, doing a two-step or something. Her voice, and her voices.

Though the struggle is always made to sound admirable and poetic, the thumping uncertainty is still there. sure, I know my dream is as real as my hands but I grip tight a short leash with insecurity tied to the end waggling along beside me.

Well, I'm sorry you couldn't make it either. I'm sorry I had to sit there in that church--which, by the way, had a broken air conditioner--sweating, watching all those people march down the aisle to look in my mother's casket and whisper to themselves all this mess about how much she looked like herself, even though she didn't. I'm sorry you weren't there to hear the lame choir drag out, song after song. I'm sorry you weren't there to see my dad try his best to be upbeat, cracking bad jokes in his speech, choking on his words. I'm sorry you weren't there to watch me totally lose it and explode into tears. I'm sorry you weren't there for me, but it doesn't matter, because even if you were, you wouldn't be able to feel what I feel. Nobody can. Even the preacher said so.

From a man doing it the only way he knows how, splitting his cries and his smiles right down the middle, swallowing his moonshine mistakes while in the sunlight his sweat irrigates his life and that life he- like you - has been tilling, hoping there's a harvest coming.

If we understand how the tree works, how the trunk and roots are where the power lies, and how gravity is on our side, we can attack it, each of us with small axes, and change the face of the forest. So let’s learn all there is to know about the tree of racism. The root. The fruit. The sap and trunk. The nests built over time, the changing leaves. That way, your generation can finally, actively chop it down.

WHEN MARK WAS SHOT I was shattered. Shifted. Never the same again. Like shards of my own heart shivving me on the inside, just like your mama told you. You and Shawn were little and I couldn't just come home and be a daddy and a husband when I couldn't be a brother no more.

some people had told me racism was a thing of he past, they'd told me not to get involved. But that was nuts. They were nuts. And more to the point---they's all been white people. Well guess what? I'm white too ---and that's exactly why I'm marching. I had to. Because racism was alive and real as shit. It was everywhere and all mixed up in everything, and the only people who aids it wasn't, and the only people was said, "Don't talk about it" were white. Well, stop lying. That's what I wanted to tell those people. Stop lying. Stop Denying. That's why I'm marching. Nothing was going to change unless we did something about it. We! White people! We had to stand up and say something about it goo, because otherwise it was just like what those posters in the crowd outside school said: OUR SILENCE IS ANOTHER KIND OF VIOLENCE.

DON’T NOBODY believe nothing these days which is why I haven’t told nobody the story I’m about to tell you. And truth is, you probably ain’t gon’ believe it either gon’ think I’m lying or I’m losing it, but I’m telling you, this story is true. It happened to me. Really. It did.

percent chance it might rain. A little. A lot. Today. Or maybe tomorrow. I mean, come on. And I’m supposed to just believe lightning don’t never strike the same place twice? Ever? Right. You know who really made me know my mother was wrong? Ghost. One time he told me about this guy—name start with a

Imagine waking up and someone, a stranger, got you strapped down, got pliers shoved into your mouth, gripping a tooth somewhere in the back, one of the big important ones, and rips it out. Imagine the knocking in your head, the pressure pushing through your ears, the blood pooling. But the worst part, the absolute worst part, is the constant slipping of your tongue into the new empty space, where you know a tooth supposed to be but ain’t no more. IT’S SO HARD TO SAY, Shawn’s dead.

Like, to hold a hand the way we held yours as a child, with a full grip, that feels like a gesture of safety. To hold hands with each other's fingers woven together can sometimes feel like a gesture of desperation. But the way y'all were yesterday-your pinky just barely curled around hers-well, to me, that feels...intimate.

1 WORLD RECORDS CHECK THIS OUT. This dude named Andrew Dahl holds the world record for blowing up the most balloons . . . with his nose. Yeah. That’s true. Not sure how he found out that was some kinda special talent, and I can’t even imagine how much snot be in those balloons, but hey, it’s a thing and Andrew’s the best at it. There’s also this lady named Charlotte Lee who holds the record for owning the most rubber ducks. No lie. Here’s what’s weird about that: Why would you even want one rubber duck, let alone 5,631? I mean, come on. And me, well, I probably hold the world record for knowing about the most world records. That, and for eating the most sunflower seeds.

For a lot of us, it doesn't always feel like you're banning the book itself. Sometimes it feels like you're banning the people that those books are about, like, that you're saying that those lives are lives that should only exist in the shadows, that those lives, though they're 10 feet away, no matter which direction you turn, you keep looking over them.

...leads back to the question of whether you, reader, want to be a segregationist (a hater), an assimilationist (a coward), or an antiracist (someone who truly loves).

Black Power was met by a new slogan, one spat out like a racist slur. Law and order.

So, slavery, though a brutal attack on Black humanity, was really just proof that White people were bad believers in Jesus.

laughter, when it’s loud and heavy and aimed at you, I think can feel just as bad as a bullet’s bang.

I SWEARSOMETIMES it feels God be flashing photos of his children, awkward, amazing, tucked in his wallet for the world to see.

How do you small-talk your father when "dad" is a language so foreign that whenever you try to say it, it feels like you got a third lip and a second tongue?

He used to ride Aaron hard.

The thing about revolution is that it almost always has to do with poor people angry about being manipulated by the rich.

What is life in a house underwater?

Dreams don’t have timelines, deadlines, and aren’t always in straight lines.

FOR THE RECORD, this movie would've been better than that stupid one he was trying to make when he was alive that's for sure. Maybe not as happy. But definitely better.

Because crying is against The Rules.

Just so you know, patent leather shoes should only be for men who are getting married. Nothing about patent leather says “war.

some rich old white dude, chillin’ on the East Side, doing his thing with some young supermodel with fake everything on a mattress made of real money. Lotto-ticket money.

My hands were already up, a reflex from seeing a cop coming toward me.

My brain exploded into a million thoughts and only one thought at the same time— please don’t kill me.

IS IT POSSIBLE for a hug to peel back skin of time, the toughened and raw bits, the irritated and irritating dry spots, the parts that bleed?

When really he was the kid who is Spider-Man. Well, as of the night before, the kid formally known as Spider-Man.

and she wipes weary from her eyes still glued to the no-good glued to the high-definition glare of low-definition life

To all of my runners let this book be breath

Smoke like spirt can be thick but ain't supposed to be nothing solid enough to hold me.

and

You love first, and that's always a good thing.

I ain't got enough mad for both of y'all, so since you my responsibility, I'm gonna save all the mad for you.

So I couldn't help but worry, even when I felt like he didn't deserve my worry anymore.

It had been a few days since everything went down, and when you're used to hanging out with a person every single day, a few days off can sometimes seem more like a few months.

IN CASE YOU AIN’T KNOW, gunshots make everybody deaf and blind especially when they make somebody dead.

He would tell me stories about how the best rappers ever were Biggie and Tupac, but I always wondered if that was just because they were dead.

The discomfort seemed to lower the ceiling...

What I mean by that is we—all of us—have to fight against performance and lean into participation. We have to be participants. Active.

She pushed back against the idea that she, as a Black person, woman, and lesbian, was expected to educate White people, men, and/or heterosexuals in order for them to recognize her humanity.

Do you know the stats? It’s something like black people are twice as likely to have no weapons on them when they’re killed by cops. Twice as likely! Should I run down the list of the people this has happened to? Calm down? Let’s paint their names on the walls and watch, there’ll be enough to give the entire hospital a fresh new look. Then tell me to calm down. He could’ve been killed!

Somebody told me once a month the moon blacks out and becomes new and the next night be back to normal. I'll tell you one thing, the moon is lucky it's not down here where nothing is ever new.

The stupidest name for a sport is football. Why isn't it called tackleball? Real football is soccer. Soccer is the second-stupidest name for a sport, unless it was the name for female boxing. But female boxing is already called boxing, even though boxing should be the sport to see who can pack up stuff, like clothes, the fastest. Why isn't that a sport? If it was a sport, Ma would be a world-champion boxer.

race journey from then to now, to show why we feel how we feel, why we live how we live, and why this poison, whether recognizable or unrecognizable, whether it’s a scream or a whisper, just won’t go away.

It's so weird how a person can be a normal part of your everyday life, and then just disappear. And when they do, you realize that some of those everyday things go with them. Like the smell of food cooking.

So many! Toni Morrison is, of course, the queen of all things literary. I heard her read from Beloved as a work in progress and it nearly stopped me dead. Other favorites: Colson Whitehead, Jesmyn Ward, Jacqueline Woodson, Nicola Yoon, Brit Bennett, Ta-Nehesi Coates, Jason Reynolds, Zadie Smith, Cristina Henríquez, Jhumpa Lahiri, Junot Díaz, Ellen Oh, Sabaa Tahir, Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche, Lisa See…and Celeste Ng.

Either way, Zurara’s documentation of the racist idea that Africans needed slavery in order to be fed and taught Jesus, and that it was all ordained by God, began to seep in and stick to the European cultural psyche.

The student storms into the library, calling for me at the top of her lungs. “Ms. Roussin, you’ve got to come here!” What did I do? This is the same girl who came to me a few days ago, reluctantly looking for a book to read for class. I’d handed her All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely. She stands in front of me, still worked up. “Ms. Roussin, this is the first book I’ve read that had me in it.” It just blew her away.

The truth is, finding that beast may or may not happen. But the treasures I've discovered under the heavy stones and behind the massive trees and deep in the dark caves have created the hunter and the human that I am.

some rich old white dude, chillin’ on the East Side, doing his thing with some young supermodel with fake everything on a mattress made of real money. Lotto-ticket money. Cheap-forty-ounce money. Bootleg-DVD money. My money.

I know people mean well when they ask those kinds of questions, but at the end of the day, they are stupid questions. How am I feeling? Well, let me think. My mother’s funeral was a couple days ago, so I damn sure ain’t happy.

And without power, all the protesting in the world meant nothing. The shift went from fighting for civil rights to fighting for freedom. The difference between the two is simple. One implies a fight for fairness. The other, a right to live.

Okay, let’s just get something straight, because this is an argument you will hear over and over again through life (I hope not, but probably). To say that slavery—or, in today’s time, poverty—makes Black people animals or subhuman is racist.

This was real life. And the beginning of a special regular story where two people meet and help each other make something beautiful, at the risk of making a mess. No this ain't no movie. This is a mirror. This me. This her. This us. This is real.

about women? And what did it mean that Jefferson, a man who owned nearly two hundred slaves, was writing America’s freedom document? Was he talking about an all-encompassing freedom or just America being free from England? While these questions hung in

So when I was done sitting at the bus stop in front of the gym, and came across all those kids on the track at the park, practicing, I had to go see what was going on, because running ain’t nothing I ever had to practice. It’s just something I knew how to do.

Fooled by racist ideas, I did not fully realize that the only thing wrong with Black people is that we think something is wrong with Black people. I did not fully realize that the only thing extraordinary about White people is that they think something is extraordinary about White people.

I was marching. I kept saying it as I scanned the crowd for Jill, pumping myself up, because some people had told me racism was a thing of the past, they's told me not to get involved. But that was nuts. They were nuts. And more to the point - they'd all been white people. Well, guess what? I'm white too - and that's exactly why I was marching. I had to. Because racism was alive and real as shit. It was everywhere and all mixed up in everything, and the only people who said it wasn't, and the only people who said "Don't talk about it" were white. Well, stop lying. That's what I wanted to tell those people. Stop lying. Stop denying. That's why I was marching. Nothing was going to change unless we did something about it. We! White people! We had to stand up and say something about it too, because otherwise it was just like what one of those posters in the crowd outside school said: OUR SILENCE IS ANOTHER KIND OF VIOLENCE

Get enough people on your side to tell you you’re right, and you’re right. Even if you’re wrong. And once you’ve been told you’re right long enough, and once your being right has led you to a profitable and privileged life, you’d do anything to not be proved wrong. Even pretend human beings aren’t human beings.

I don't know you, don't know your name, if you got brothers or sisters or mothers or fathers or cousins that be like brothers and sisters or aunties or uncles that be like mothers and fathers, but if the blood inside you is on the inside of someone else, you never want to see it on the outside of them.

Again, dove into each other. This time the hug, a mix of I miss you and who are you and I'm confused and I'm cracking and I don't know what the hell to do or where the hell to go. My father's hand gripped my back as I did my best to bury myself in his armpit, to get lost in the new and strangely familiar feeling of fatherhood.

Maybe you are a dancer moving to the sound of your own future; or a musician banging strumming bowing plucking blowing into, creating soundtracks for dream trains chugging along through thick night; or a painter spilling and splattering confessions across the face of stretched canvas; or an actor praying at the altar of your alter ego; or a photographer, finger on the button like a quick-draw cowboy, shooting not to kill anyone but to preserve forever; or maybe even a writer for some strange reason, writing expert books, pages of good intention and rah-rah and fantasy and sometimes truth, or maybe even letters to people you don't know but do know you love.

I’m, um… I’m not perfect,” he repeated, now wiping away a tear. “But none of us are. And what we learn is that if we push, if we aren’t scared to be scared, if we’re not terrified of being uncomfortable, if we can trust ourselves and be honest about where we fall short, where we miss the bar, and can accept a little help, which we all need sometimes, we can be… good.

I mean, I had seen this happen so many times. Not personally, but on TV. In the news. People getting beaten, and sometimes killed, by the cops, and then there’s all this fuss about it, only to build up to a big heartbreak when nothing happens. The cops get off. And everybody cries and waits for the next dead kid, to do it all over again. That’s the way the story goes. A different kind of Lifetime movie.

A racist idea is any idea that suggests something is wrong or right, superior or inferior, better or worse about a racial group. An antiracist idea is any idea that suggests that racial groups are equals. Racist and antiracist ideas have lived in human minds for nearly six hundred years. Born in western Europe in the mid-1400s, racist ideas traveled to colonial America and have lived in the United States from its beginning. I

Brown v. Board of Education, 1954: I’m sure you’ve heard of this one. If you live in the South and go to a diverse school, this is why. This was the case that said racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. The results: The schools began to mix. What’s really interesting about this case, though, something rarely discussed, is that it’s actually a pretty racist idea. I mean, what it basically suggests is that Black kids need a fair shot, and a fair shot is in White schools. I mean, why weren’t there any White kids integrating into Black schools? The assumption was that Black kids weren’t as intelligent because they weren’t around White kids, as if the mere presence of White kids would make Black kids better. Not. True. A good school is a good school, whether there are White people there or not. Oh, and of course people were pissed about this.

....So I keep peeking through a crack in the door and when he sees me he smiles because the fever ain't burned all his bright up yet and he tells me he will be wonderful in a few weeks and that we'll go back to squeeze-hugging and roughhousing and he'll be able to get through his good-bad jokes without the punchline getting stuck in his throat jabbing and hooking and he says not to worry because he's a fighter like my sister and competitive like my brother but I know he's also a worrier like me....

Difference: Then I think about Ms Broome's assignment. What could I be? What do I wish I could become to change the world? I think about telling Benni I might want to be wet cement to fill the cracks in the sidewalk. Not to hide. But to stop someone else from tripping. Or maybe I'd be an umbrella to keep rain from someone's head. Keep someone dry in a storm. But I don't say none of that to Benni, because I don't think either of those things would change the world. So I tell her I don't know. I don't know. I don't know how to change the world.

The first step to building an antiracist America is acknowledging America’s racist past. By acknowledging America’s racist past, we can acknowledge America’s racist present. In acknowledging America’s racist present, we can work toward building an antiracist America. An antiracist America where no racial group has more or less, or is thought of as more or less. An antiracist America where the people no longer hate on racial groups or try to change racial groups. An antiracist America where our skin color is as irrelevant as the colors of the clothes over our skin.

...and they talking about a protest and how they heard this and that this being people from everywhere are taking to the streets to call out and cry out for freedom to live and freedom to laugh... and freedom to run and be out of breath and catch it again and freedom to play without worry about the rules being rearranged and freedom to breathe and freedom to walk and shout and cry and scream and scroll and post and pray and the that in this and that is the feeling that this fight for freedom ain't nothing but a fist with face that looks like mine swinging at the wind.

A giant rose from the second row. Seriously, the biggest man I’ve ever seen in real life. His head was the size of a basketball, and his back was like a king-size mattress. Except made of bricks. “Good afternoon,” the giant said. I tried not to laugh, but I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. This humongous monster of a man had the voice of a six -year-old. High, squeaky. Like , cute. I could hear that weird sound when you try to hold in a laugh, but a little bit leaks out— like a mouth fart— happening all over the church. People were trying not to crack up, but his voice made it so hard.

Your left! Your left! Your left-right-left! Your left! Your left! Your left-right-left! Yeah, yeah, yeah. I left. I left. I left-left-left that wack school and that even more wack ROTC drill team because it was Friday, which to me, and basically every other person on Earth, meant it was time to party. Okay, maybe not everybody on Earth. I’m sure there was a monk somewhere on a mountain who might’ve been thinking of something else. But I wasn’t no monk. Thank God. So for me and my friends, Friday was just another word for party. Monday, Tuesday, Hump Day (because who can resist the word “hump”?), Thursday, and Party.

Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t have a problem with a good prayer. I mean, I believe in God. At least I think I do. I just wondered where God was when I was being mopped by that cop. And I knew that’s what the pastor had come to tell me. That God was there. That God was always there. Which, to me, is the wrong thing to say, because if he or it or whatever was there and didn’t do nothing, then that would make God my enemy. Because he let it happen. I would much rather Pastor Johnson say that God wasn’t there. That he was busy. That he turned his back, just for a second, to check on somebody else, and that asshole officer snuck right by him and got me. But… nope.

Douglas’s work. And the first time Mrs. Caperdeen showed us a slide from his series Aspects of Negro Life, I knew the kind of art I wanted to start making. And so I did. The only difference was that I framed mine in a circle, like The Family Circus. And that’s why I needed Ma to make sure she brought me my sketch pad and pencils. I woke up early, and before doing anything else, before getting up and having a morning pee, or brushing my teeth, or spirometering, I turned the TV on, muted it, then grabbed my stuff and starting sketching on a fresh page. I wasn’t sure what I was drawing. That’s not true. I knew exactly what I was drawing. The only thing I could. I was

...our job sometimes is to divorce ourselves from the fact that I've got to constantly be gifting young people with tools and equip them with - I'm imparting lessons upon them. Sometimes it about, look you hate reading, my job is to figure out how to help you not hate reading. The rest of it we can get to, but I got to figure out how to get you engaged. In order to do that sometimes you got to pull back. Right. You got to put a little grease in the pot. Right. So if that means you've got to have them reading rap lyrics in your class, then that's what it is. If that means you got to have them reading comic books or the athletes reading Sports Illustrated and the sports section in ESPN Magazine, then that's what it is. Our job is not just - it's not to just promote literature, which is what we all do. Our job is to promote literacy and there's a difference. Right. There's a difference. Literacy is what will help them way more than what literature will do.

A school bus is many things. A school bus is a substitute for a limousine. More class. A school bus is a classroom with a substitute teacher. A school bus is the students' version of a teachers' lounge. A school bus is the principal's desk. A school bus is the nurse's cot. A school bus is an office with all the phones ringing. A school bus is a command center. A school bus is a pillow fort that rolls. A school bus is a tank reshaped- hot dogs and baloney are the same meat. A school bus is a science lab- hot dogs and baloney are the same meat. A school bus is a safe zone. A school bus is a war zone. A school bus is a concert hall. A school bus is a food court. A school bus is a court of law, all judges, all jury. A school bus is a magic show full of disappearing acts. Saw someone in half. Pick a card, any card. Pass it on to the person next to you. He like you. She like you. K-i-s-s-i . . . s-s-i-p-p-i is only funny on a school bus. A school bus is a stage. A school bus is a stage play. A school bus is a spelling bee. A speaking bee. A get your hand out of my face bee. A your breath smell like sour turnips bee. A you don't even know what a turnip bee is. A maybe not, but I know what a turn up is and your breath smell all the way turnt up bee. A school bus is a bumblebee, buzzing around with a bunch of stingers on the inside of it. Windows for wings that flutter up and down like the windows inside Chinese restaurants and post offices in neighborhoods where school bus is a book of stamps. Passing mail through windows. Notes in the form of candy wrappers telling the street something sweet came by. Notes in the form of sneaky middle fingers. Notes in the form of fingers pointing at the world zooming by. A school bus is a paintbrush painting the world a blurry brushstroke. A school bus is also wet paint. Good for adding an extra coat, but it will dirty you if you lean against it, if you get too comfortable. A school bus is a reclining chair. In the kitchen. Nothing cool about it but makes perfect sense. A school bus is a dirty fridge. A school bus is cheese. A school bus is a ketchup packet with a tiny hole in it. Left on the seat. A plastic fork-knife-spoon. A paper tube around a straw. That straw will puncture the lid on things, make the world drink something with some fizz and fight. Something delightful and uncomfortable. Something that will stain. And cause gas. A school bus is a fast food joint with extra value and no food. Order taken. Take a number. Send a text to the person sitting next to you. There is so much trouble to get into. Have you ever thought about opening the back door? My mother not home till five thirty. I can't. I got dance practice at four. A school bus is a talent show. I got dance practice right now. On this bus. A school bus is a microphone. A beat machine. A recording booth. A school bus is a horn section. A rhythm section. An orchestra pit. A balcony to shot paper ball three-pointers from. A school bus is a basketball court. A football stadium. A soccer field. Sometimes a boxing ring. A school bus is a movie set. Actors, directors, producers, script. Scenes. Settings. Motivations. Action! Cut. Your fake tears look real. These are real tears. But I thought we were making a comedy. A school bus is a misunderstanding. A school bus is a masterpiece that everyone pretends to understand. A school bus is the mountain range behind Mona Lisa. The Sphinx's nose. An unknown wonder of the world. An unknown wonder to Canton Post, who heard bus riders talk about their journeys to and from school. But to Canton, a school bus is also a cannonball. A thing that almost destroyed him. Almost made him motherless.