Quotes from Ilyasah Shabazz

It's easier, I guess, to laugh and joke and pretend that tomorrow won't be any different from any of the days before. Easier than trying to talk about how strange it is to be part of a family and still be all alone.

The government people wanted us to believe there was something wrong with her. Because she was strong. Because she stood up for what she believed. Times were hard, but she was still Mom, and she refused to let anyone reduce her.

We could recite passages from Shakespeare and legends about African kingdoms going back thousands of years. We could share facts about the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, the largest forced migration of a people in the history of humankind, and about the great military strategist Queen Nzingah, who defended the nation of Angola against Portuguese invaders in a powerful effort to destroy the slave trade entirely.

How could anyone mistake Mom for white? Mom was a proud black woman, the proudest I knew. She hated us having to take welfare food, hated accepting anything we needed but did not earn. We had a picture of Marcus Garvey on the living-room wall, talking about going back to Africa, talking about the power of blackness and the strength of the Negro heart. I couldn't imagine looking at Mom and not seeing that.

Mom talked a good game about the power of blackness, but she knew that the white world held even more power. You just needed to find a way to break in.

Papa, who instructed us to always hold our heads up, who promised us we were worthy, who assured us we were descended from kings—and from architects and farmers and healers and visionaries—no matter what all the hateful people in the world had to say about us.

I'm making friends. Feeling good. My new name makes me feel lighter on my feet. With a new name, anything is possible.

I have always been proud to be my father's child. And an important part of my journey has been to accept the part of myself that is my father. It is a privilege to carry his work and his legacy forward. I will always strive to walk in his footsteps and become the best person I can, and I invite you to do the same. (Author's note)

Here and now, I don't want to be Detroit Red. I want to slip the skin of this life, to be new and clean again.

I am my father's son. But to be my father's son means they will always come for me. They will always come for me, and I will always succumb.

For a second, I get a little sad about it. Not the leaving—just the way it seems like the world is always changing, right underneath my feet.

We all chanted one of Garvey's famous phrases together: Up, up you mighty race. You can accomplish what you will.

For a quick second, when he met my eyes, I knew what he was thinking, too. Malcolm, the troublemaker. Malcolm, the one who won't toe the line. Looking in his eyes—a thing I maybe never did before—it speared me.

Maybe it had been me causing this trouble all along. All my antics. I was the problem, the one who couldn't do right, no matter what.

So he's nervous about me making trouble at the bus stop. It makes me want to laugh. Just as truthfully, I could've told him I was class president. On the football team. Straight-A student. But what was interesting about any of that?

I believed in Papa's stories a lot longer than I should have.

The government men dragged Mom out of the house. They held her by the elbows and ankles and shoulders and thighs, their harsh, meaty hands digging into her softness. She flailed against their touch, but they overpowered her with ease, the way white men always know how to do.

I know without knowing: the man in that tree was a proud black man. Uppity, some might say. Out of his place, some might say. Too smart for his own good. I can hear the words, see those pink lips moving, spitting the words that promised his death. His back never bent underneath it, and they hated that most. I know plenty.

I knew what it meant. Pap didn't have an accident. He died for being a proud black man. He died because someone killed him. Someone who was going to get away with it.

Ella looked every bit like a well-to-do city woman. Her black hair was coiled in waves around her head, beneath a pert, proper red hat. She wore matching gloves and a coat that looked thick and warm. She was a tall woman with a strong presence. She seemed enormous to me, like Papa, so full of blackness.

I had to second-guess everything. The classmates who had elected me president—did they really think I was the best in the class, or was I just a novelty object they wanted to play with?

I couldn't ever be more than that in Lansing. Can't ever be more anyplace, it turns out, as long as I wear this brown skin. I used to think things were different, because Papa used to tell me stories about all the great things I could be and could do. But now I understand. Now I know they were just stories. Just ideas in his head.

I have to learn to talk like the guys down the Hill. The "cats" down the Hill, that is. I have to be hip.

I think how amazing it would be if I wasn't behind the scenes, but just one of the throng out on the floor. Right in the swing of things. The thick of it.