Ibi Zoboi Quotes

My first meal in America is one that I make for myself and eat by myself. I wonder if this is a sign of things to come.

Late June in Brooklyn is like the very beginning of a party-when the music is really good, but you know that it's about to get way better, so you just do a little two-step before the real turn-up starts.

Death parked itself on that corner of American and Joy, some days as still as stone, other days singing cautionary songs and delivering telltale riddles, waiting for the day when one girl would ask to open the gates to the other side.

We have more space and less time. And the love we had for our whole neighborhood now only fits into this wood-frame house in the middle of a quiet block. We don't know the people who live across the street or on either side of us.

I dreamed of going to the most remote places on this earth to dig for old bones, older than people. Before humans and their stupid ideas. Before hate. Maybe even before love, too. Dinosaurs just existed. No lectures, no books, no language. No world-conquering Europeans and no defeated everybody else. Just those powerful, unrestrained creatures roaming the planet.

Don't give me no 'but you're beautiful on the inside' bullshit."

"No, you are beautiful on the outside," I say.

"Don't give me that bullshit either. I'm beautiful when I say I'm beautiful. Let me own that shit," she says. Her eyes have not left the computer screen this whole time, but I know she's paying attention to everything I say.

"Okay, then you are ugly."

"Thanks for being honest."

"Seriously. That's what we say in Haiti. 'Nou led, men nou la.' We are ugly, but we are here."

"We are ugly, but we are here," she says, almost whispering. "I hear that.

...as long as you have a bougie heart, you can aim for the finer things in life.

We were too heavy. Not with our bags. Not with our bodies. But with our burdens.

We fold our immigrant selves into this veneer of what we think is African American girlhood. The result is more jagged than smooth. This tension between our inherited identities and our newly adopted selves filters into our relationships with other girls and the boys we love, and how we interact with the broken places around us.

We have to become everything that we want. Consume it. Like our lwas.

Because the thing about sharp corners is, the right turns can bring you back home.

We're not gonna throw away the past as if it meant nothing. See? That's what happens to whole neighborhoods. We built something, it was messy, but we're not gonna throw it away.

When you remember all the ways you been killed, and how that shit hurt your fucking soul, ain't no way in hell you could shake that off. So I didn't give a fuck about nothing.

Even as you kept telling me that I'm becoming a woman, you never let me go out into the world to be free.

Sometimes love is not enough to keep a community together. There needs to be something more tangible, like fair housing, opportunities, and access to resources. Lifeboats and lifelines are not supposed to just be a way for us to get out. They should be ways to let us stay in and survive. And thrive.

If hot red is for anger and rage, pink is the color of a soft burning – hot enough to light up the dark corners of sadness and grief, but cool enough to be tender, innocent, open.