Quotes About Identity

Apparently I've been typecast in science fiction: I'm a Russian bisexual telepathic Jew.

Elena lo espera en silencio, frente a él pero de espaldas, y antes de que responda dice, mejor no me ponga un nombre, Padre, tal vez si usted o su iglesia encuentran una palabra para nombrarme, después se arroguen el derecho de decirme cómo tengo que ser, cómo tengo que vivir. O morir.

Por qué tanta gente cree que su vida es única y yo creo que la mía es igual a la de cualquiera?

uno debería escribir en la lengua con la que piensa, con la que sueña.

I'd rather any kind of business on the ground floor than the utter lack of respect for pedestrians with which buildings are put up in this city today. . . . Nobody cares any more about pedestrian identity.

De allí somos, de donde florece o da fruto cada palabra.

Elena siempre fue de llorar poco, casi nada, pero desde que su cuerpo es de Ella, de esa puta enfermedad puta, ya ni siquiera es dueña de sus lágrimas.

La forma en que nombramos plantas, flores, frutos, aun usando un mismo idioma, devela nuestro origen tanto o más que cualquier tonada. De allí somos, de donde florece o da fruto cada palabra.

Ése es el nombre. Elena sabe desde hace un tiempo que ya no es ella la que manda sobre algunas partes de su cuerpo, los pies por ejemplo. Manda él. O ella. Y se pregunta si al Parkinson habría que tratarlo de él o de ella, porque aunque el nombre propio le suena masculino no deja de ser una enfermedad, y una enfermedad es femenina. Como lo es una desgracia. O una condena.

Siempre es más sencillo parecerse a los demás.

What's left of you when your arm can't even put on a jacket and your leg can't even take a step and your neck can't straighten up enough to let you show your face to the world, what's left? Are you your brain, which keeps sending out orders that won't be fol- lowed? Or are you the thought itself, something that can't be seen or touched beyond that furrowed organ guarded inside the cranium like a trove?

Another person's body, sometimes, can be terrifying.

tuvo que meter las manos en el barro, en la inmundicia, para hacer lo que había que hacer, sin cometer ni delito ni pecado, ésa soy yo.

Ya no se trataba de volver de un viaje concluido al lugar de partida, tenía la sensación de que no volvería nunca a ser quien había sido.

Another friend tells you you have to learn not to absorb the world. She says sometimes she can hear her own voice saying silently to whomever—you are saying this thing and I am not going to accept it. Your friend refuses to carry what doesn't belong to her.

And still you are not the guy and still you fit the description because there is only one guy who is always the guy fitting the description.

Do not say I if it means so little, holds the little forming no one. You are not sick, you are injured-- you ache for the rest of your life.

It is the White Man who creates the black man. But it is the black man who creates.

I suppose if all I had to do was bleach my hair blond to stop white supremacists from wanting to burn crosses in my yard, I might consider blondness myself. Certainly, the forty-fifth president and his family understand the importance of the blond signifier in their campaign to Make America Great Again.

Senator Bernie Sanders, who was the hope of so many, considering Democratic losses after the 2018 midterm elections, remarked, "There are a lot of white folks out there who are not necessarily racist who felt uncomfortable for the first time in their lives about whether or not they wanted to vote for an African-American." How is not voting for someone simply because they're black not racist?

What does a victorious or defeated black woman's body in a historically white space look like?

this nation is both its credits and debits.

After it happened I was at a loss for words. Haven't you said this yourself? Haven't you said this to a close friend who early in your friendship, when distracted, would call you by the name of her black housekeeper? You assumed you two were the only black people in her life. Eventually she stopped doing this, though she never acknowledged her slippage. And you never called her on it (why not?) and yet, you don't forget.

Zora Neale Hurston's "I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.