Percival Everett Quotes

If you're not making mistakes, you're not learning.

Belief has nothing to do with truth.

Read. Always read. No one can take that away from you.

At that moment the power of reading made itself clear and real to me. If I could see the words, then no one could control them or what I got from them. They couldn’t even know if I was merely seeing them or reading them, sounding them out or comprehending them. It was a completely private affair and completely free and, therefore, completely subversive.

I hated the world that wouldn’t let me apply justice without the certain retaliation of injustice.

With my pencil, I wrote myself into being.

Which would frighten you more? A slave who is crazy or a slave who is sane and sees you clearly?

Everybody should read fiction… I don’t think serious fiction is written for a few people. I think we live in a stupid culture that won’t educate its people to read these things. It would be a much more interesting place if it would. And it’s not just that mechanics and plumbers don’t read literary fiction, it’s that doctors and lawyers don’t read literary fiction. It has nothing to do with class, it has to do with an anti-intellectual culture that doesn’t trust art.

I had never seen a white man filled with such fear. The remarkable truth, however, was that it was not the pistol, but my language, the fact that I didn’t conform to his expectations, that I could read, that had so disturbed and frightened him.

Dey takes the lies dey want and throws away the truths dat scares ’em.

Everybody talks about genocides around the world, but when the killing is slow and spread over a hundred years, no one notices. Where there are no mass graves, no one notices. American outrage is always for show. It has a shelf life.

I did not look away. I wanted to feel the anger. I was befriending my anger, learning not only how to feel it, but perhaps how to use it.

- You know, dull tools are much more dangerous than sharp ones. - I paused to admire his metaphor, but he continued.

Religion is just a controlling tool they employ and adhere to when convenient.

But my interest is in how these marks that I am scratching on this page can mean anything at all. If they can have meaning, then life can have meaning, then I can have meaning.

There is no God, child. There’s religion but there’s no God of theirs. Their religion tells that we will get our reward in the end. However, it apparently doesn’t say anything about their punishment. But when we’re around them, we believe in God. Oh, Lawdy Lawd, we’s be believin’. Religion is just a controlling tool they employ and adhere to when convenient.

Why will I bury you? So that one day I might disturb your grave.

It’s a horrible world. White people try to tell us that everything will be just fine when we go to heaven. My question is, Will they be there? If so, I might make other arrangements.

To fight in a war,' he said. 'Can you imagine?' 'Would that mean facing death every day and doing what other people tell you to do?' I asked. 'I reckon.' 'Yes, Huck. I can imagine.

We're slaves. We're not anywhere. Free person, he can be where he wants to be. The only place we can ever be is in slavery.

I chose the word enemy, and still do, as oppressor necessarily supposes a victim.

How strange a world, how strange an existence, that one’s equal must argue for one’s equality, that one’s equal must hold a station that allows airing of that argument, that one cannot make that argument for oneself, that premises of said argument must be vetted by those equals who do not agree.

The world demands that you introduce yourself twice, first as you are, and second as you are told to be.

I can tell you that I am a man who is cognizant of his world, a man who has a family, who loves a family, who has been torn from his family, a man who can read and write, a man who will not let his story be self-related, but self-written.

I saw the surface of her, merely the outer shell, and realized that she was mere surface all the way to her core.

White people often spent time admiring their survival of one thing or another. I imagined it was because so often they had no need to survive, but only to live.

You should know I consider police shootings to be lynchings

The children said together, “And the better they feel, the safer we are.” “February, translate that.” “Da mo’ betta dey feels, da mo’ safer we be.” “Nice.

Way I sees it is dis. If’n ya gots to hab a rule to tells ya wha’s good, if’n ya gots to hab good ’splained to ya, den ya cain’t be good. If’n ya need sum kinda God to tells ya right from wrong, den you won’t never know.

It's okay to love something bigger than yourself without fearing it. Anything worth loving is bigger than we are anyway.

I am a sign. I am your future. I am James.

I considered the northern white stance against slavery. How much of the desire to end the institution was fueled by a need to quell and subdue white guilt and pain? Was it just too much to watch? Did it offend Christian sensibilities to live in a society that allowed that practice? I knew that whatever the cause of their war, freeing slaves was an incidental premise and would be an incidental result.

I felt tired of the failures of men. They were always failing in the most basic ways, like looking down or away at the moment when they should be gutsy enough to meet your eye.

What you’re saying is that if someone pays you enough, it’s okay to abandon what you have claimed to understand as moral and right.

Unknown Male is a name,” the old woman said. “In a way, it’s more of a name than any of the others. A little more than life was taken from them.

Linda Mallory is the postmodern fuck.

A reiteration of the obvious is never wasted on the oblivious.

He could have gone through life without the knowledge I had given him and he would have been no worse off for it. But I understood at that moment that I had shared the truth with him for myself. I needed for him to have a choice.

It's incredible that a sentence is ever understood. Mere sounds strung together by some agent attempting to mean some thing but the meaning need not, and does not, confine itself to that intention.

Why are people so fucked up?” I asked “Maybe you do need college, Poiter,” Everett said. “You want to know why people are so fucked up? Son, that’s about the only question I can answer with even a small measure of authority. It’s because they’re people. People, my friend, are worse than anybody.

When you step on the gas, do it gently, softly, slowly. Okay? All right, let's try it again. Gently. Treat it like you would a woman." "I would never step on a woman.

I am the angel of death, come to offer sweet justice in the night. I am a sign I am your future. I am James.

As a matter of fact, just recently I passed for white so I could pass for black.

History is a motherfucker,

I suspected at that moment that I would not die, but it was unclear whether I would be pleased about that fact.

I was, in life, to be a gambler, a risk taker, a swashbuckler, a knight. I accepted, then and there, my place in this world. I was a fighter of windmills. I was a chaser of whales.

It’s a bitch, ain’t it? The things we assume.

I had never heard such bullshit in my life. I opened my mouth and said, "I have never heard such bullshit in my life.

I had never read a novel, though I understood the concept of fiction. It wasn't so unlike religion, or history, for that matter.

Folks be funny lak dat. Dey takes the lies dey want and throws away the truths dat scares ’em.

Tell them I’m called February, but that I was born in June. They like thinking that we’re stupid like that.

I ain't never seen two fellas talk so much and say so little," Huck said. "You be almos' thinkin' dey be preachers," I said. "You know what I could go fer, Bilgewater?" "What's that, Dolphin?

Was it evil to kill evil? The truth was that I didn't care. It was this apathy that left me wondering about myself - not wondering why I didn't feel anything or whether I was incapable of feeling, but wondering what else I was capable of doing. It was not an altogether bad feeling.

But in this notebook I would reconstruct the story I had begun, the story I kept beginning, until I had a story.

You sound like a physicist," she said. "There's no need to be insulting.

If you don’t want a secret, don’t accept it.

It would of course be a shame to get too old. There’s no virtue in living too long. Living shouldn’t become a habit.

What did I do? I'm a slave, Norman. I inhaled when I should have exhaled. What did I do?

Huck nodded. “You know where we goin’?” the boy asked. “Ain’t got no idee. But we’s on our way.” —

With my pencil, I wrote myself into being. I wrote myself to here.

Tell the story with your ears. Listen.

hear him shouting, “But I paid two hundred dollars for you.” A man who refused to own slaves but was not opposed to others owning slaves was still a slaver, to my thinking.

It had a rear bumper sticker that read Legalize Recreational Plutonium.

I had already come to understand the tidiness of lies, the lesson learned from the stories told by white people seeking to justify my circumstance. I appreciated Voltaire’s notion of tolerance regarding religious difference and I understood, as absorbed as I was, that I was not interested in the content of the work, but its structure, the movement of it, the calling out of logical fallacies. And so, after these books, the Bible itself was the least interesting of all. I could not enter it, did not want to enter it, and then understood that I recognized it as a tool of my enemy. I chose the word enemy, and still do, as oppressor necessarily supposes a victim.

Yes, but them people liked it, Jim. Did you see their faces? They had to know them was lies, but they wanted to believe. What do you make of that?” “Folks be funny lak dat. Dey takes the lies dey want and throws away the truths dat scares ’em.

I don’t think meaning exists without form, and certainly form does not exist without meaning. Meaning and story come first. Story is the most important part of fiction. Without it, what’s the point? If all you care about is form, become a critic.

Why did God set it up like this?” Rachel asked. “With them as masters and us as slaves?” “There is no God, child. There’s religion but there’s no God of theirs. Their religion tells that we will get our reward in the end. However, it apparently doesn’t say anything about their punishment. But when we’re around them, we believe in God. Oh, Lawdy Lawd, we’s be believin’. Religion is just a controlling tool they employ and adhere to when convenient.” “There must be something,” Virgil said. “I’m sorry, Virgil. You might be right. There might be some higher power, children, but it’s not their white God. However, the more you talk about God and Jesus and heaven and hell, the better they feel.” The children said together, “And the better they feel, the safer we are.

I was as much scared as angry, but where does a slave put anger? We could be angry with one another; we were human. But the real source of our rage had to go without address, swallowed, repressed.

The hard, gritty truth of the matter is that I hardly ever think about race. Those times when I did think about it a lot I did so because of my guilt for not thinking about it. I don’t believe in race. I believe there are people who will shoot me or hang me or cheat me and try to stop me because they do believe in race, because of my brown skin, curly hair, wide nose and slave ancestors. But that’s just the way it is.

Babies are smarter than us. It seems they’re always trying to kill themselves. That’s why we have to watch them every second, so they don’t swallow nickels or drink weed killer or eat Tylenol like candy. Then we get stupid and want to live.

It could have been my turn to experience a bit of guilt, having toyed with the boy's feelings, and he being too young to actually understand the problem with his behavior, but I chose not to. When you are a slave, you claim choice where you can.

Let’s try some situational translations. Something extreme first. You’re walking down the street and you see that Mrs. Holiday’s kitchen is on fire. She’s standing in her yard, her back to her house, unaware. How do you tell her?” “Fire, fire,” January said. “Lawdy, missum! Looky dere.” “Perfect,” I said. “Why is that correct?” Lizzie raised her hand. “Because we must let the whites be the ones who name the trouble.

Papa, why do we have to learn this?” “White folks expect us to sound a certain way and it can only help if we don’t disappoint them,” I said. “The only ones who suffer when they are made to feel inferior is us. Perhaps I should say ‘when they don’t feel superior.

could believe it, I thought, pretending, in slave fashion, not to be there. After being cruel, the most notable white attribute was gullibility.

had already come to understand the tidiness of lies, the lesson learned from the stories told by white people seeking to justify my circumstance.

To fight in a war,” he said. “Can you imagine?” “Would that mean facing death every day and doing what other people tell you to do?” I asked. “I reckon.” “Yes, Huck, I can imagine.

And though I missed my lover, I was not sad. I was satisfied. I was different.

Of all possible worlds this was the one in which I had landed.

People should know, understand that not all Thursdays are the same.

She stared at the television. “Why is it that after all the bullets have bounced off Superman’s chest, he then ducks when the villain throws the empty gun at him?

Anyone who speaks to members of his family knows that sharing a language does not mean you share the rules governing the use of that language.

I wrote to extend my thought, I wrote to catch up with my own story, wondering all the while if that was even possible.

Death is never a stranger. That’s why we fear it.

Like it say in the good book, what goes around comes around". "What good book is that?" Charlene asked. "Guns and Ammo?

That is what equality is, Jim. It's the capacity for becoming equal.

A man who refused to own slaves but was not opposed to others owning slaves was still a slaver, to my thinking.

The worst part was that the judge told the grand jury that it was an act of a multitude and so they couldn’t recommend any indictments. So, if enough people do it, it’s not a crime.

I read and read, but what I needed was to write. I needed that pencil. I could not keep track of my thoughts. I could not follow my own reasoning after a while. This was perhaps because I couldn't stop reading long enough to make space in my head. I was like a man who had not eaten for a season and had then gorged himself until sick. And my books, once read, were not what I wanted, not what I needed. (...) With my pencil, I wrote myself into being. I wrote myself to here.

Linda Mallory was the postmodern fuck. She was self conscious to the point of distraction, counted her orgasms and felt none of them. She worried about how she looked while making love, about how her expression changed when she started to come, whether she was too tight, too loose, too dry, too wet, too loud, to quiet and she found need to express these concerns during the course of the event.

It’s a horrible world. White people try to tell us that everything will be just fine when we go to heaven. My question is, Will they be there? If so, I might make other arrangements.” Easter laughed.

Hannibal. I’m looking for the Graham farm.” “The breeder?” he asked. “What do you mean?” “Graham’s a breeder. He breeds slaves and sells them.” “My wife and daughter were taken there.” The man was silent.

At that moment the power of reading made itself clear and real to me. If I could see the words, then no one could control them or what I got from them. They couldn’t even know if I was merely seeing them or reading them,

Then I wondered which was more confidence killing: believing that you should not have felt inadequate when in fact you were, or discovering that, all along, you were actually smart enough to see things clearly, that you were correct in your fear.

Why are you still a priest?” Eigen asked, not letting the subject go. “My dear girl,” Karras said. “I remain a goddamn cleric because in this world one needs something to hide behind. I have chosen this fucking collar. You have chosen mathematics.

She looked at Norman. “Are you really a slave?” she asked. “I am.” “And you’re colored,” she said. Norman nodded. “Who can tell?” “Nobody,” Norman said. “Then why do you stay colored?” “Because of my mother. Because of my wife. Because I don’t want to be white. I don’t want to be one of them.” Sammy looked at me. “That’s a pretty good answer.” “I thought so,” I said.

There was a mama raccoon that lived in the tree. She had taken to walking past me nonchalantly in the darkness. Tonight she stayed in the tree, high above me, listening to the dogs. We were both animals and we didn’t know which of us was the prey. We accepted that we both were.

Is she dead?” Norman asked. I rolled her onto her stomach to try to force the water out of her. I pushed on her chest and her shirt came up to reveal a hole. “Is that…” Norman stopped. I touched the blackened indentation. “She’s been shot,” I said. “Good Lord,” Norman said. “She’s dead.” “We should have left her where she was,” Norman said. “At least she’d be a live slave. Not just another dead runaway.” I studied the lifeless body on the ground before me. “She was dead when I found her,” I said. “She’s just now died again, but this time she died free.

People, and by people I mean them, never look for truth, they look for satisfaction. There is nothing worse, certain painful and deadly diseases notwithstanding, than an unsatisfactory, piss-poor truth, whereas a satisfactory lie is all too easy to accept, even embrace, get cozy with.

I really wanted to read. Though Huck was asleep, I could not chance his waking and discovering me with my face in an open book. Then I thought, How could he know that I was actually reading? I could simply claim to be staring dumbly at the letters and words, wondering what in the world they meant. How could he know? At that moment the power of reading made itself clear and real to me. If I could see the words, then no one could control them or what I got from them. They couldn’t even know if I was merely seeing them or reading them, sounding them out or comprehending them. It was a completely private affair and completely free and, therefore, completely subversive.

At that moment the power of reading made itself clear and real to me. If I could see the words, then no one could control them or what I got from them. They couldn't even know if I was merely seeing them or reading them, sounding them out or comprehending them. It was a completely private affair and completely free, and therefore, completely subversive.

You know', I said, 'I have come to dislike museums.’ 'Why is that?’, she asked. 'It is where art comes to die.

Safe movement through the world depended on mastery of language, fluency.

I thought about tearing out his songs and burning them, but they would still exist. Those crackers would still sing them. Better to know they exist. Don't you think?

There was nothing scarier than human sounds.

He resisted the urge to let satire ring through his voice.

The lie felt good because I had taken control of the narrative around me. The

What’s your dog’s name?” “Oh, he ain’t got no name.” “Why’s that?” “I don’t like names,” the man said, looking down at his pet. “How do you call it?” Jim asked. “Call it?

-She could have some crazy ass husband or boyfriend. You know, a stupid redneck with a gun. -That's redundant.

It was clear that the people we had escaped on the beach were not following us; they were too concerned with being survivors.

The one thing you know about people who ban books is that they don't read books.

Never address any subject directly when talking to another slave,” she said. “What do we call that?” I asked. Together they said, “Signifying.” “Excellent.

So, you think somebody took his body?" "Dead people don't walk," Jim said. "Except for Jesus," Safer said.

When does the war end?” I asked. “Does it end? That’s the question. Who gets to say that it’s over? A war continues until the victor says it’s over.

dull tools are much more dangerous than sharp ones.

I had to ask myself and answer honestly, How much do I want to be free? And I couldn’t lose sight of my goal of freeing my family. What would freedom be without them?

He’s going to get drunk now, not so much because he can, but because we can’t,” I said.

Mexico,” I said. I couldn’t believe I was hearing my own voice. I felt I had either surprised myself or betrayed myself.

It seem sumtimes you jest gotta put up wif your friends. Dey gonna do what dey gonna do.

But I will not let this condition define me. I will not let myself, my mind, drown in fear and outrage. I will be outraged as a matter of course.

If enough of them kill you, they’re innocent.

if enough people do it, it’s not a crime.

There were those slaves who claimed a distinction between good masters and cruel masters. Most of us considered such to be distinction without difference.

To tell the truth, I hadn’t seen much killing myself, except that I lived with it daily, the threat, the promise of it. Seeing one lynching was to see ten.

If you want to know a place, you talk to its history

Poor me! A man without a religion, without a decent lie to call my own.

There might be some higher power, children, but it’s not their white God.

She was dead when I found her,” I said. “She’s just now died again, but this time she died free.

Safe movement through the world depended on mastery of language

They wanted a constitution that would justify their behavior. If I hadn't written it for them, someone else would have. What in the world would be different if that had happened?

He’s been told that nothing is better than meeting God and cold coffee is better than nothing.

I recall that I am extremely forgetful. Nothing happened.

And like my BIPDIP husband, it's never been out of the state, not even to Boston." "BIPDIP?" "Born in Providence, died in Providence. We actually honeymooned in Newport. I hate him so much.

Ain’t people a part of nature?” “If’n dey is, den dey ain’t no good part. Da rest o’ nature don’ hardly talk to no human peoples anymo. Maybe it try from time to time, but peoples don’ listen.

These were sad people, and for the world I wanted to think of them as decent. Perhaps they were decent enough, but the place made them so offensive to me that all who lived there became there.

ten white men in blackface, one black man passing for white and painted black, and me, a light-brown black man painted black in such a way as to appear like a white man trying to pass for black.

We were both animals and we didn’t know which of us was the prey. We accepted that we both were. I considered running, leaving my raccoon friend, but in which direction does one run from lightning?

It’s almost noon, Trig,” I said. “We’ve nearly run out of morning. A sad thought, morning being my favorite part of the day. My least favorite part of the day is from 2:34 to 4:56 in the afternoon.

If'n ya gots to hab a rule to tells ya wha's good, if'n ya gots to hab good 'splained to ya, den ya cain't be good. If'n ya need sum kinda God to tells ya right from wrong, den you won't never know.

gun at me. I pointed my pistol at him. “I am the angel of death, come to offer sweet justice in the night,” I said. “I am a sign. I am your future. I am James.” I pulled back the hammer on my pistol.

It’s a horrible world. White people try to tell us that everything will be just fine when we go to heaven. My question is, Will they be there? If so, I might make other arrangements.” Easter laughed. I laughed with him. “And

Belief has nothing to do with truth. Believe what you like. Believe I'm lying and move through the world as a white boy. Believe I'm telling the truth and move through the world as a white boy anyway. Either way, no difference.

There might be some higher power, children, but it’s not their white God. However, the more you talk about God and Jesus and heaven and hell, the better they feel.” The children said together, “And the better they feel, the safer we are.

If one knows hell as home, then is returning to hell a homecoming? Even in hell, were there such a place, one would know where the fires were just a little cooler, where the rocks were just a little less jagged. And so it was in my hell.

Read Richard Brautigan’s The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western (1974) or Percival Everett’s God’s Country (1994)—these are fine rides!—or read Robert Coover’s Ghost Town (1998) with its unrelenting drollery, but John Williams took the western seriously, and more importantly, he took the reasons behind the emergence of the genre seriously. What even the most knocked-off, hackneyed western satisfied in slews of American readers was an urge and a desire and a hunger worth contemplating, excavating.

You have a notion, like Raynal, of natural liberties, and we all have them by virtue of our being human. But when those liberties are put under societal and cultural pressure, they become civil liberties, and those are contingent on hierarchy and situation.

While in college I was a member of the Black Panther Party, defunct as it was, mainly because I felt I had to prove I was black enough. Some people in the society in which I live, described as being black, tell me I am not black enough. Some people whom the society calls white tell me the same thing. I have heard this mainly about my novels, from editors who have rejected me and reviewers whom I have apparently confused and, on a couple of occasions, on a basketball court when upon missing a shot I muttered Egads.

We started to laugh and then we spotted a white man up the road. There was nothing that irritated white men more than a couple of slaves laughing. I suspected they were afraid we were laughing at them or else they simply hated the idea of us having a good time.

Like most people I am smarter than some, dumber than others, skinnier than most, and fatter than a few, but none was ever more confused than I was. I flew with confusion always parallel to me, and a whole internal chase at my rear. The one matter that was not confusing to me, but seemed to escape all the others, was the fact that the only thing that was certain to become obsolete, would necessarily become wearied and worn, was the truth. I knew this in spite of the truth that I had had little truck with the truth in my life. It was not that I considered myself a resident in a den of lies, but rather that my history was shrouded and diced and soaking wet with hysteria and contradiction. Contradictions or no, my trajectory through life, though different from most, was, nonetheless, a trajectory.

Less than 1 percent of lynchers were ever convicted of a crime. Only a fraction of those ever served a sentence. Teddy Roosevelt claimed the main cause of lynching was Black men raping White women. You know what? That didn’t happen.” “Why do you think White people are so afraid of that?” “Who knows. Sexual inadequacy, maybe. An amplification of their own desire to rape, which they did.” Mama Z puffed out smoke. “But I think rape was just an excuse.” “You think Whites are just afraid of Black men?” “I think it’s sport.” 73 Sheriff Red Jetty sat in a booth in the back of the Dinah.

But what are you going to say when she asks you about it?" I asked. Lizzie cleared her throat. "Miss Watson, dat sum conebread lak I neva before et." "Try 'dat be,' " I said. "That would be the correct incorrect grammar." "Dat be sum of conebread lak neva I et," she said. "Very good," I said.

I am called Jim. I have yet to choose a name. In the religious preachings of my white captors I am a victim of the Curse of Ham. The white so-called masters cannot embrace their cruelty and greed, but must look to that lying Dominican friar for religious justification. But I will not let this condition define me. I will not let myself, my mind, drown in fear and outrage. I will be outraged as a matter of course. But my interest is in how these marks that I am scratching on this page can mean anything at all. If they can have meaning, then life can have meaning, then I can have meaning.

Was she pretty?” he asked. “I dunno. I reckon. It’s a scary thing for a slave to think such things.” “Why is that?” “Jest the way the world is.” “You think this here river is pretty?” Huck asked. “I reckon I do,” I said. “Then why you cain’t say if my mama was pretty?” “River ain’t a white woman.

It pained me to think that without a white person with me, without a white-looking face, I could not travel safely through the light of the world, but was relegated to the dense woods. Without someone white to claim me as property, there was no justification for my presence, perhaps for my existence.

Let’s imagine now that it’s a grease fire. She’s left bacon unattended on the stove. Mrs. Holiday is about to throw water on it. What do you say? Rachel?” "Missums, that water gone make it wurs!” “Of course, that’s true, but what’s the problem with that?” Virgil said, “You’re telling her she’s doing the wrong thing.

My name is James. I’m going to get my family. You can come with me or you can stay here. You can come and try freedom or you can stay here. You can die with me trying to find freedom or you can stay here and be dead anyway. My name is James.” “Morris.” “Harvey.” “Llewelyn.” “Buck.” This from the smallest of them. “Let’s go.

And they used to have cross burnin’s a lot more and family picnics and softball games and all such,’ said Donald. ‘I remember eatin’ cake next to that glowing cross. I loved my mama’s cake.’ ‘Yeah,’ several voiced their agreement. ‘We don’t do nothin’ now,’ a man complained. ‘I don’t even know where my hood is. I don’t even own a rope.

You have a notion, like Raynal, of natural liberties, and we all have them by virtue of our being human. But when those liberties are put under societal and cultural pressure, they become civil liberties, and those are contingent on hierarchy and situation. Am I close?" Voltaire was scribbling on paper. "That was good, that was good. Say all of that again.

Now here he was, tailored iron-gray suit, thin maroon tie, a maroon handkerchief peeking out from his breast pocket. His oxblood wing tips gleamed. He looked like a supervillain or, worse, an upper-crust English spy, an openly promiscuous and functionally alcoholic heterosexual with an on-and-off-again messiah complex. It was the shoes, the way they were tied.

White folks expect us to sound a certain way and it can only help if we don’t disappoint them,” I said. “The only ones who suffer when they are made to feel inferior is us. Perhaps I should say ‘when they don’t feel superior.’ So, let’s pause to review some of the basics.” “Don’t make eye contact,” a boy said. “Right, Virgil.” “Never speak first,” a girl said. “That’s correct, February,” I said.

At eighteen I realized I was eighteen and not so smart, or special and that might have been the only way that I was in fact special. I found my ideas poorly formed and repugnant, my self awkward, and, more or less, for lack of a better word, geeky. In fact my brother, second year medical student that he was, revisited his childhood and, when he passed in the hallway, muttered, "Geek." "It's not my fault," I said.

If'n I took a mule from the side of the road and I knowed who it belonged to, wouldn't that be stealin'?" "I ain't a mule, Huck." "Ain't I doin' wrong, though?" Huck said. He was troubled. "How am I s'posed to know what good is?" "Way I sees it is dis. If'n ya gots to hab a rule to tells ya wha's good, if'n ya need sum kinda God to tells ya right from wrong, den you won't never know." "But the law says..." "Good ain't got nuttin' to do wif da law. Law says I'm a slave.

They want you because you’re money.” “What?” “You’re mortgaged, Jim. Like a farm, like a house. Really, the bank owns you. Miss Watson gets a bond, a piece of paper that say what you’re worth, and you just keep living in this condition. Living. You’re a part of the bank’s assets and so people all over the world are making money off your scarred black hide. Make sense? Nobody wants you free.” “Somebody does. There’s a war.” She nodded. “Maybe you won’t be a slave, but you won’t be free.

Should we save them, Jim?" The boy was so innocent. "Huck, I reckon if'n we save 'em, dey gonna turn me in. What you think?" The boy studied on that for a spell. "I reckon you're right. But what will them folks do to them?" "I don't know, Huck. Maybe dey jest pay a fine. Maybe dey get tarred and feathered. I don't know." "That seems right awful." "I s'pose it do. But dey was stealin' from dem folk. Tellin' lies lak dey was. He weren't neber no pirate." "Yes, but them people liked it, Jim. Did you see their faces? They had to know them was lies, but they wanted to believe. What do you make of that?" "Folks be funny lak dat. Dey takes the lies dey want and throws away the truths dat scares 'em." The river put its full pull on us and we watched the men grow smaller. "I reckon I do that, too," the boy said. "What say?" "I kin see how much you miss yer family and yet I don't think about it. I forget that you feel things jest like I feel. I know you love them." "Thank you, Huck.

Sailboat Table (table by Quint Hankle) The Voyage of the Narwhal, by Andrea Barrett Complete Stories, by Clarice Lispector Boy Kings of Texas, by Domingo Martinez The Marrow Thieves, by Cherie Dimaline A Brief History of Seven Killings, by Marlon James There There, by Tommy Orange Citizen: An American Lyric, by Claudia Rankine Underland, by Robert Macfarlane The Undocumented Americans, by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio Deacon King Kong, by James McBride The Dutch House, by Ann Patchett Will and Testament, by Vigdis Hjorth Every Man Dies Alone, by Hans Fallada The Door, by Magda Svabo The Plot Against America, by Philip Roth Fates and Furies, by Lauren Groff The Overstory, by Richard Power Night Train, by Lise Erdrich Her Body and Other Parties, by Carmen Maria Machado The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story, edited by John Freeman Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates Birds of America, by Lorrie Moore Mongrels, by Stephen Graham Jones The Office of Historical Corrections, by Danielle Evans Tenth of December, by George Saunders Murder on the Red River, by Marcie R. Rendon Leave the World Behind, by Rumaan Alam Ceremony, by Leslie Marmon Silko On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, by Ocean Vuong The Unwomanly Face of War, by Svetlana Alexievich Standard Deviation, by Katherine Heiny All My Puny Sorrows, by Miriam Toews The Death of the Heart, by Elizabeth Bowen Mean Spirit, by Linda Hogan NW, by Zadie Smith Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Firekeeper’s Daughter, by Angeline Boulley Erasure, by Percival Everett Sharks in the Time of Saviors, by Kawai Strong Washburn Heaven, by Mieko Kawakami Books for Banned Love Sea of Poppies, by Amitav Ghosh The English Patient, by Michael Ondaatje Euphoria, by Lily King The Red and the Black, by Stendahl Luster, by Raven Leilani Asymmetry, by Lisa Halliday All the Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides The Vixen, by Francine Prose Legends of the Fall, by Jim Harrison The Winter Soldier, by Daniel Mason

The fear of course is that in denying or refusing complicity in the marginalization of 'black' writers, I ended up on the very distant and very 'other' side of a line that is imaginary at best. I didn't write as an act of testimony or social indignation (though all writing in some way is just that) and I did not write out of a so-called family tradition of oral storytelling. I never tried to set anybody free, never tried to paint the next real and true picture of the life of my people, never had any people whose picture I knew well enough to paint. Perhaps if I had written in the time immediately following Reconstruction, I would have written to elevate the station of my fellow oppressed. But the irony was beautiful. I was a victim of racism by virtue of my failing to acknowledge racial difference and by failing to have my art be defined as an exercise in racial self-expression. So, I would not be economically oppressed because of writing a book that fell in line with the very books I deemed racist. And I would have to wear the mask of the person I was expected to be.

He don't belong to you," Huck said. "He's my slave. He don't belong to neither one of you." "See, boy, you're a minor and there's a state law that says a minor cain't own no slave," the Duke said. "And our story was that he be belongin' to me," the King said. "That's the story we come up with and you didn't stick to it. Nothing worse than fellas won't stick to a story. The nigger was supposed to be mine if'n anyone asked. So, he belong to me. Possession is nine-tenths of the law." "What's that mean?" Huck said. "Story goes that I own Ceasar, so, in real life, I own Ceasar.

Yes?” “That is what equality is, Jim. It’s the capacity for becoming equal. The same way a black man in Martinique can learn French and so become French, he can also acquire the skills of equality and so become equal. But I repeat myself.” “I hate you,” I said through my fever and chills. “You realize, of course, that I have been bitten by a snake. Only to have you come to me in this delirium.” “Well, yes, but all men are equal. That’s my point. But even you have to admit the presence of, shall we call him—it—the devil, in your African humans.” Voltaire adjusted his position and held his hands to the fire. “You’re saying we’re equal, but also inferior,” I said. “I’m detecting a disapproving tone,” he said. “Listen, my friend, I’m on your side. I’m against the institution of slavery. Slavery of any kind. You know that I am an abolitionist of the first order.” “Thank you?” “You’re welcome.” “You do not believe that humans are inherently bad?” I asked. “I do not. If they were, they would kill as soon as they could walk.” “How do you explain slavery? Why are my people subjected to it, treated with such cruelty?” Voltaire shrugged. “Let me try this,” I said. “You have a notion, like Raynal, of natural liberties, and we all have them by virtue of our being human. But when those liberties are put under

The books began to arrive, boxes of them. At first I could not open a single one, but was taken by them as objects. The covers were all so attractive. The jacket copy made each one sound great, blurbs from established literary icons told me why I should like it. The fat books were praised for being fat, the skinny books were praised for being skinny, old writers were great because they were old, young writers were talents because of their youth, every one was startling, ground-breaking, warm, chilling, original, honest and human. I would have found refreshing: "Jo Blow’ s new novel takes on the mundane and leaves it right where it is. The prose is clear and pedestrian. The moves are tried and true. Yet the book is not so alarmingly dishonest. The characters are as wooden as the ones we meet in real life. This is a torturous journey through the banal. The novel is ordinary but not insipid, pointless but not meaningless, savorless but not stale. Jo Blow is a middle aged writer with a family and no discernible special features. He lives in a house and is about as smart as his last novel." So, I opened the first book and I loved it. Actually, I enjoyed reading. The book sucked. But I did enjoy reading it and so I read another and another. I read three in one night and the better part of the next day. All three were sterile, well-constructed, predictable fare. I decided that perhaps I was jaded. I was familiar with novels the way a surgeon is familiar with blood. I would have to contact my innocent, inner self, the part of me that could be amazed by the dull and commonplace.

She had to know, and I’m certain she did, that even the simple matter of dark skin would be a cause of consternation for her parents. I came to imagine them as Ward and June Cleaver. I recalled my mother happening upon me watching that television show one afternoon. It launched her into such a fit of hysteria that I was afraid she might become pregnant again. “How dare they put that propaganda on the television?” my mother barked. “But of course that’s what the box is for, isn’t it? Here is my black son sitting here in his black neighborhood watching some bucktoothed little rat and his washed-out, anally stabbed Nazi-Christian parents.” “There’s a brother, too,” I said, being six or so and not really understanding the tirade. “Oh, a brother, too. I see him there, an older lily white acorn fallen so close to the tree. Turn that crap off. No, leave it on. Study the problem, Not Sidney. Soak it in.” With that she marched off to make cookies.

In the year of your lord 1963, August 27, I was in a hotel room with John Lewis and three other members of SNCC and I was livid. I had provided several lines to John’s speech and they were being removed. I remember the lines. The first was, If the dogs of the South continue unchained, then we will bite back, we will move on those tender parts that bleed so readily, that bleed so profusely. Okay, I said, understanding that there was a lot of blood in the statement—rather, threat—and so I added the word nonviolently. This was not satisfactory. The next line was, The Kennedy administration does not even talk a good game, failing to support voters’ rights while paying mere lip service to civil rights, as if there is a difference. We say fuck the administration that still walks hand in hand with Jim Crow. Well, I could see that the word fuck was a bit strong and so I suggested screw and then 45 screw nonviolently. I was never much of a player in the politics of the day after that evening.

Is she now? I didn’t know the FBI investigated murders,” Mama Z said. “I thought such things were matters for local authorities.” “There might be some civil rights violations involved,” Hind said. “Whose civil rights?” “I don’t know yet.” “I ask because you have to have civil rights in order for the them to be violated.” Mama Z let that hang in the air. “I’m sorry. Forgive my manners. We can sit in here. Gertie, be a dear and make us some tea and bring some cookies. Make sure the cat doesn’t come in here and bother us.” Gertrude nodded. “I actually like cats,” Hind said. “This one sheds like crazy,” Mama Z said. “Your suit would be a mess before you could say, ‘Mississippi goddamn.’” She didn’t quite sing the words. “What is your last name, Mama Z?” Hind asked. “Everybody just calls me Mama Z.” “But for my notes.” “Lynch. My name is Adelaide Lynch.” To Gertrude, “Go get that tea, baby.” Gertrude left. “Where does the Z come in?” “I don’t quite remember,” the old woman said. “It’s easier to spell than Omega.” Mama Z looked Hind in the eye. “How old are you?” “One hundred and five.” “You look great. Moving around like this. Do you live alone?” “Yes.” “That’s amazing. What’s your secret?” “Venom.” “What?” Hind asked. “It’s what I call my nightly tea,” Mama Z said, then, conspiratorially, she added, “I mix it with bourbon.” “I see.

That might be the story of Riverside. Tying to fit in with the big boys by accommodating their oversized posteriors. ... That's how we say it. We say, 'This is a horsey area.' ... That means go slow. We have feed stores and tack shops and desert, a really beautiful desert. It's the desert that has me here in 909. Technically, the Badlands is chaparral. The hills are filled with sage, wild mustard, fiddleheads and live oaks. Bobcats, meadowlarks, geckos, horned lizards, red tailed hawks, kestrels, coach whip snakes, king snakes, gopher snakes. Rattlesnakes and coyotes. We don't see rain for seven months of the year and when we do we often flood. In the spring, the hillsa re green. They are layered and gorgeous. This is in contrast to the rest of the year when the hills are brown and ochre and layered and gorgeous. ~ 909, Percival Everett

The examination: 1) Imagine a radical and formidable contextualism that derives from a hypostatization of language and that it anticipates a liquefied language, a language that exists only in its mode of streaming. How is a speaker to avoid the pull into the whirl of its nonoriented stream of language? 2) Is the I one's body? Is fantasy the specular image? And what does this have to do with the Borromean knot? In other words, why is there no symptom too big for its britches? 3) How might it feel to burn with missionary zeal? Don't be shy in your answer. We students looked at each other with varying degrees of confusion, panic, and anger. And like idiots, we set to work. At least they did. I read the questions over and over and after the number 1 and 2 on my paper I wrote, I don't know. After the number 3 I wrote, Awful, then added, damn it.

In the garden the lovely flycatcher perches, watching as I deadhead the roses, plucking wilted petals in fistfuls and letting them float like messages to the dirt. The little bird casually studies my hand as it folds into a ball then fan-fingers out into some kind of idea perhaps. All the airish signic of her dipandump helpabit, and I have finally accepted her seat there on that spindly branch, her assiduous presence. She stretches out her wings, letting the sun bathe them, so that I can see her breast, see that her chest is clean of graffiti, clear of symbols, free of meaning.

For some reason hospital elevators always seem to go too fast or too slow.

So, when we see him staggering around later acting the fool, will that be an example of proleptic irony or dramatic irony?” “Could be both.” “Now that would be ironic.

I looked at one woman who might have been intrigued by me or taken with me, the entertainer. I saw the surface of her, merely the outer shell, and realized that she was mere surface all the way to her core.

I admit that I entertained briefly the thought that I was going to drown to death. Drowning to death always made a person more interesting, but I wanted, at that moment, to be, to remain, as boring as possible.

saw the surface of her, merely the outer shell, and realized that she was mere surface all the way to her core.

I don’t see no profit in askin’ for stuff just so I don’t get it and learn a lesson ’bout not gettin’ what I asked fer. What kinda sense does that make? Might as well pray to that board there.

At that moment the power of reading made itself clear and real to me. If I could see the words then no one could control them or what I got from them. They couldn't even know if I was merely seeing them or reading them, sounding the out of comprehending them. It was a completely private affair and completely free and, therefore, completely subversive.

There might be some higher power, children, but it’s not their white God. However, the more you talk about God and Jesus and heaven and hell, the better they feel.” The children said together, “And the better they feel, the safer we are.” “February, translate that.” “Da mo’ betta dey feels, da mo’ safer we be.” “Nice.” —

Long time ago. It was their daddies who killed Emmett Till back in the fifties,” Hayes said.

I have dark brown skin, curly hair, a broad nose, some of my ancestors were slaves and I have been detained by pasty white policemen in New Hampshire, Arizona and Georgia and so the society in which I live tells me I am black; that is my race.

How strange a world, how strange an existence, that one's equal must argue for one's equality, that one's equal must hold a station that allows airing of that argument, that one cannot make that argument for oneself, that premises of said argument must be vetted by those equals who do not agree.

At that moment the power of reading made itself clear and real to me. If I could see the words, then no one could control them or what I got from them. They couldn't even know if I was merely seeing them or reading them, sounding them out or comprehending them. It was a completely private affair and completely free and, therefore, completely subversive.

And yet, with all that running, no place appeared like a new place. Perhaps that was the nature of escape.

Just keep living,” I said. “Just remember, once they see you, or see me in you, you’ve been seen. I know you don’t understand. But you will one day.

I kin see how much you miss yer family and yet I don’t think about it. I forget that you feel things jest like I feel. I know you love them.

It could have been my turn to experience a bit of guilt, having toyed with the boy’s feelings, and he being too young to actually understand the problem with his behavior, but I chose not to. When you are a slave, you claim choice where you can.

And so, after these books, the Bible itself was the least interesting of all. I could not enter it, did not want to enter it, and then understood that I recognized it as a tool of my enemy. I chose the word enemy, and still do, as oppressor necessarily supposes a victim.

I will be outraged as a matter of course. But my interest is in how these marks that I am scratching on this page can mean anything at all. If they can have meaning, then life can have meaning, then I can have meaning.

C’est plus qu’un crime, c’est une faute.

Because we must let the whites be the ones who name the trouble.” “And why is that?” I asked. February said, “Because they need to know everything before us. Because they need to name everything.

I reckon I do that, too,” the boy said. “What say?” “I kin see how much you miss yer family and yet I don’t think about it. I forget that you feel things jest like I feel. I know you love them.” “Thank you, Huck.

Those little bastards were hiding out there in the tall grass. Just James

saw the whiskers first and the animal, momentarily, looked nothing like a fish. Then I saw it clearly and it truly scared me, the way it stared at me with black and deep eyes, the way it insisted on living.

Hope? Hope is funny. Hope is not a plan. Actually, it’s just a trick. A ruse.

The waiting for some tear in the invisible curtain that bound us felt like centuries. In fact, was centuries. But this waiting for some news of my family’s whereabouts was endless, dead spaces separated by dead spaces.

She’d fallen into a circle of innovative writers who had survived the sixties by publishing each others’ stories in their periodicals and each others’ books collectively, thus amassing publications, so achieving tenure at their various universities, and establishing a semblance of credibility in the so-called real world. Sadly, these people made up a good portion of the membership of the Nouveau Roman Society.