Bernice L. McFadden Quotes

Prison had a way of draining people of their hope and humanity. But Harlan didn't have to worry about that because he'd gone in empty.

You see, no one ever told her to keep her legs closed and crossed at the ankles. No one ever said: "Save it for the one you love" or "Good girls say no.

The men know that black women are women at the very least; magical at their zenith and biblical at the core, being with a black woman was as sacred as dousing oneself in holy water. That

I write to breath life back into memory to remind African-Americans of our rich and textured history. I also see myself as a "root," and for me the "fierce winds" include the marginalization-the downright segregation-of literature written by people of color.

Writing kept her sane. Kept her form spinning out of control. Kept her tongue still whenever some white person spoke down to her. She had to write, it was the only thing that was completely hers, that she could look forward to at the end of her long day.

What kinda women you is? You gonna let a man lay up on another woman in your own house and not do nothing about it?

For many years, Tass's life was like an echo.

The next day the stock market crashed. Hemmingway didn't quite understand what
it all meant, but from the way the white people in town were running around like
chickens without heads, she took it as an omen.

'Sugar, aint you ever had no good time?' she said with a bit of sadness in her voice.
'What you mean?' Sugar said, ...
'Seems to me that I ain't never see you look up from whatever you were doing and just smile.'
'Just smile? Smile at what? At who?'
'Smile into the air, girl!' she said and waved her arm through the air ... you better start, 'cause time is running and a life without good times ain't a life worth having.

In 1922 everything changed again. The Eskimo pie was invented; James Joyce's Ulysses was printed in Paris; snow fell on Mauna Loa, Hawaii; Babe Ruth signed a three-year contract with the New York Yankees; Eugene O'Neill was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama; Frederick Douglass's home was dedicated as a national shrine; former heavyweight champion of the world Jack Johnson invented the wrench ...

The people in his Harlem did not speak, they sang their way through conversations and disagreements,

we ace boon coons forever.

But grief let loose from a woman who lost a child - that was the worst type of grief of all.

J.W. and Roy didn't just snatch the childhood away from Emmett; they stole it from every single black child in Mississippi.

It was in his high school music class that he first became acquainted with a battered caramel-colored Stella Parlor. When Harlan raked his fingers over the six strings, his entire body vibrated. He'd never thought of himself as incomplete - one half of something he could name - but there it was, the very thing that had been missing from his young life.

Sugar ain't spoiled, she just a little bruised, is all. Bruises can heal and fade away to nothing.

Baby, everybody got their own reasons for doing things they do in life. It don't matter what her reason was at the time, what matters is she come back for you, and even though you might think it's too late, it ain't never too late where a mother and her child is concerned.

She would watch with glee as Rain was relegated to standing in her shoes; Easter hoped to God they pinched.