I know that I will always be expected to have extra insight into black texts--especially texts by black women. A working-class Jew...ish woman from Brooklyn could become an expert on Shakespeare or Baudelaire, my students seemed to believe, if she mastered the language, the texts, and the critical literature. But they would not grant that a middle-class white man could ever be a trusted authority on Toni Morrison.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Women's rights is not only an abstraction, a cause; it is also a personal affair. It is not only about "us"; it is also about me a...nd you. Just the two of us.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What I think the political correctness debate is really about is the power to be able to define. The definers want the power to na...me. And the defined are now taking that power away from them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I remember a very important lesson that my father gave me when I was twelve or thirteen. He said, "You know, today I welded a perf...ect seam and I signed my name to it." And I said, "But, Daddy, no one's going to see it!" And he said, "Yeah, but I know it's there." So when I was working in kitchens, I did good work.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
...black women write differently from white women. This is the most marked difference of all those combinations of black and white..., male and female. It's not so much that women write differently from men, but that black women write differently from white women. Black men don't write very differently from white men.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »