Carry: A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land

It’s okay, I’ve learned, to love the things that make you, even if they also are the things that unmake you.

When we police a woman's affect, when we privilege it or equate it with her actions, with what she actually does, we're engaging in our most pervasive and yet our most quiet form of sexism, our most quiet form of everyday violence.

When you're going to be called trouble anyway, your life then becomes your own.

You can't teach racists to be less racist by calling them what they are. They remain unbothered by insinuation or even direct accusations of racism but they are not fine with being told their writing is bad.

I love the story like I loved the dance studio, the bar, the hills surrounding the farmhouse. It's okay, I've learned, to love the things that make you, even if they are also the things that unmake you.

Whether a circumstance is acknowledged openly or formally or whether it’s denied, how a situation becomes one worthy of study, is mainly in how it does or does not intersect with or affect the lives of the wealthy. Because it’s a commonly held American belief that those from poverty or any version of its neighborhood deserve to suffer, to overwork, to burn out their minds and health and good hearts early. It’s a shrug-and-move-on situation if it’s a situation at all. It’s a Wednesday. It’s as regular as bright leaves falling off trees in the fall.