a journey of transformation
“A little learning, indeed, may be a dangerous thing, but the want of learning is a calamity to any people.”
-Frederick Douglass
**Tinha sete anos apenas, [I was only seven years old] apenas sete anos, [only seven years old] Que sete anos! [what seven years?!] Não chegava nem a cinco! [I wasn’t even five!] De repente umas vozes na rua [when suddenly some voices in the street] me gritaram Negra! [shouted, “black girl!”] Negra! Negra! Negra! Negra!…
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Home is not where you are born; home is where all your attempts to escape cease.
-Naguib Mahfouz
If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there’s no progress. If you pull it all the way out, that’s not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven’t pulled the knife out, much less healed the wound. They won’t even admit the knife is there.
–Malcolm X
Where can students of color get intellectual validation that does not require them to so fully assimilate that they lose the best of themselves, their families, and their cultures? It occurred to me that through grade school and high school we had learned to compete, to keep up, but not to surpass; to stand alongside but not in front; to fit in but not to reshape.
like black butterflies 