"Ignorance is a green switch; it'll hurt you, and won't break."

"Make love to me in Spanish. Not with that other tongue."

"She made things magic for him."

"We real cool."

"Happiness never lasts long, does it?"

"So spoiled with colored folks waiting on 'em all their days! Don't know what they'll do in heaven, 'cause I'm gonna sit down up there myself."

"A wicked smile revealing sharp, carnassial teeth made for tearing great chunks out of life, and betraying her formidable desire to succeed."

Incredible memoir. Poetic & haunting. Searing & unflinching.

"We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville, Tennessee, in the time that I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child."

"You loved so hard and hoped so much and then you ended up with nothing."

Nope. Life is too short for me to struggle through this ghost story.

Great autobiography of a Black woman revolutionary.

I tried. Had to bail. The language just didn't ring true for me.

This is the literary equivalent of a rom-com. Very predictable even in its plot twists & turns. According to her bio, three of her novels (including this one) have been optioned for film. That tells you all you need to know.

This is the literary equivalent of a rom-com. Very predictable even in its plot twists & turns. According to her bio, three of her novels including this one have been optioned for film. That tells you all you need to know.

"I was thinking maybe the reason you used to get like that was because at some level you always knew."

I had to bail on this one. Just not doing it for me. Trying too hard.

I couldn't get past the first page. It's supposed to be "a comic masterpiece." It wasn't funny to me at all. First sentence: "This may be hard to believe, coming from a black man, but I've never stolen anything."

I understand why they are making this book into a film. & I don't mean that in a good way. There's even a Magical Negro.

"My world is circumscribed by linguistic dangers."

"No one wants to see the block party broken up"

"One should not confuse a label with a commitment."

"No doubt Cain and Abel loved each other, in their way, quite as much as, or even more than, David and Jonathan."

"So far I had managed to keep humanly alive through transfusions from books."

"For Sonny, the problem with America wasn't segregation but the fact that you could not, in fact, segregate."

The beauty! The sublime! The palm trees! Ugh! I had to bail on this one. I wanted to read it because I heard that many writers like it. Too thick and lush for me.

I read it cover-to-cover in one sitting. Then, I read it again. Should be savored but it was just too good.

"This essay collection is ambitious. I think we live in a time that requires ambition, compassion, reflection, and action."

Uninteresting narrative about a fascinating career

"My mother the immigrant had picked up the essential American desire to better oneself and married it to the new black consciousness and so-called pride."

Self-absorbed anecdotes on love. Not the reflective meditation I was hoping to read.

"In case of a public scandal. I ought to be well dressed."

The composure she seemed to wear so easily was a garment put on with a hard discipline.