pickI have mixed feelings about this book. My favourite parts were the introduction and the commentary. For some reason I expected this to be nonfiction. Once we got to the fiction part, it took about half the book for me to really get into it. I just wanted more of that intro. I was into that from the jump. Still, a good book and certainly a different way to look at the character of King Herod from the Bible.
pickMagnolia Flower is a 1925 short story by Zora Neale Hurston, about a Black & Indigenous woman who falls in love with a man her father loathes. This children‘s book adaptation by Ibram X. Kendi introduces the younger generation to the topic of enslavement & Native Americans being forced off their land. Interestingly, the story is narrated by a river to a brook! Great artwork.
Weird that the tagged book is not showing the book‘s actual title.
We, too, consider machine gun bullets good laxatives for heathens who get constipated with toxic ideas about a country of their own. If the patient dies from the treatment, it was not because the medicine was not good.
People even waste time denouncing their enemies in open warfare for shooting back too hard, or too accurately. There is no attempt to be accurate as to truth, however. The whole idea is to be complimentary to one‘s self and keep alive the dream. The other man‘s side commits gross butcheries. One‘s own side wins smashing victories.
What is the principle of slavery? Only the literal buying and selling of human flesh on the block? That was only an outside symbol. Real slavery is couched in the desire and the efforts of any man or community to live and advance their interests at the expense of the lives and interests of others.
I was sincere for the moment in which I said the things. [...] It was true for the moment, but the next day or the next week, is not that moment. [...] So the great difficulty lies in trying to transpose last night‘s moment to a day which has no knowledge of it. That look, that tender touch, was issued by the mint of the richest of all kingdoms. That same expression of today is utter counterfeit, or at best the wildest of inflation.
The one who makes the idols never worships them, however tenderly he might have molded the clay. You cannot have knowledge and worship at the same time. Mystery is the essence of divinity.
I accept the means at my disposal for working out my destiny. It seems to me that I have been given a mind & will-power for that very purpose. I do not expect God to single me out & grant me advantages over my fellow men. Prayer is for those who need it. Prayer seems to me a cry of weakness, & an attempt to avoid, by trickery, the rules of the game as laid down. I do not choose to admit weakness. I accept the challenge of responsibility.
I was a part before the sun rolled into shape and burst forth in the glory of change. I was, when the earth was hurled out from its fiery rim. I shall return with the earth to Father Sun, and still exist in substance when the sun has lost its fire, and disintegrated in infinity to perhaps become a part of the whirling rubble in space. Why fear? [...] I am one with the infinite and need no other assurance.
#audiobook 2w