The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.
—Ursula K. Le Guin (b. 1929)
Had middle class black women begun a movement in which they had labeled themselves “oppressed,” no one would have taken them seriously.
—bell hooks (b. 1955)
Through heavy menace and mystery
Of half-waking tropic dawn,
Behold a little black boy,
A naked black boy,
—Mary Effie Lee Newsome (1885–1979)