Quotes About Identity

Do you know what it's like," he said, "to feel that you're in the wrong body?" "Well actually..." the Doctor began, wiggling his own fingers in front of his face.

What would Bob think? That's the question. I need to get you a bumper sticker that says WHAT WOULD BOB THINK?" "I don't need the bumper sticker because it's already stamped on my brain and I wish it wasn't. It shouldn't matter so much what he thinks. This is my life without him," she said.

I'm one eighth Lakota, but I don't think one eighth of anything counts for much. I'm half Irish, and then some Austrians got into the mix. Then there's the English part. That's where Hillary came from. I bet the Indians even watch the weather channel.

Everyone has an identity. One of their own, and one for show.

Well, I didn't need them. I didn't need anyone. I was Lola Rose. I just wished I looked more like my idea of Lola Rose.

I WOKE WITH a start, my head hurting, aching all over. For a moment I didn't know where I was. Indeed, I felt so fuddled I didn't even know who I was. Hetty Feather, Sapphire Battersea, Emerald Star? I had three names now.

Lately, I'd been feeling like I was standing outside watching everything and everybody. Wishing I could take the part of me that was over there and the part of me that was over here and push them together—make myself into one whole person like everybody else.

Look how beautifully black we are. And as we dance, I am not Melody who is sixteen, I am not my parents' once illegitimate daughter—I am a narrative, someone's almost forgotten story. Remembered.

Everyone else has gone away. And now coming back home isn't really coming back home at all.

Thing about white people," Jeremiah's father tells him, "they know what everybody else is, but they don't know they're white" - "Maybe some know it" His father eyed him and smiled "When they walk into a party and everyone's black, they know it. Or when they get caught in Harlem after nightfall, they know it. But otherwise...

And as we stood half circle in the bright school yard, we saw the lost and beautiful and hungry in each of us. We saw home.

If someone had taken that book out of my hand said, You're too old for this maybe I'd never have believed that someone who looked like me could be in the pages of the book that someone who looked like me had a story.

we looked, we saw the people trying to dream themselves out. As though there was someplace other than this place. As though there was another Brooklyn.

Some evenings, I kneel toward Mecca with my uncle. Maybe Mecca is the place Leftie goes to in his mind, when the memory of losing his arm becomes too much. Maybe Mecca is good memories, presents and stories and poetry and arroz con pollo and family and friends... Maybe Mecca is the place everyone is looking for... It's out there in front of you, my uncle says. I know I'll know it when I get there.

And when I can't speak it, I write it down. I wish I was different. Wish I was taller, smarter, could talk out loud the way I write things down. I wish I didn't always feel like I was on the outside, looking in like a Peeping Tom.

When you're 15, pain skips over reason, aims right for the marrow.

What did it sound like...having someone call your name across a crowded school yard? How did it feel to turn to the sound of your name, to see some smiling face or waving hand and know it was for you and you alone?" —Staggerlee

Chapter 1 JEREMIAH WAS BLACK. HE COULD FEEL IT. THE WAY THE sun pressed down hard and hot on his skin in the summer. Sometimes it felt like he sweated black beads of oil. He felt warm inside his skin, protected. And in Fort Greene, Brooklyn—where everyone seemed to be some shade of black-he felt good walking through the neighborhood. But one step outside. Just one step and somehow the weight of his skin seemed to change. It got heavier. Light-skinned

Letters becoming words, words gathering meaning, becoming thoughts outside my head becoming sentences written by Jacqueline Amanda Woodson

When boys called our names, we said 'Don't even say my name. Don't even put it in your mouth.' When they said, 'You ugly anyway,' we knew they were lying. When they hollered, 'Conceited!' we said, 'No- convinced!' We watched them dip-walk away, too young to know how to respond. The four of us together wasn't something they understood. They understood girls alone, folding their arms across their breasts, praying for invisibility.

The first time I write my full name Jacqueline Amanda Woodson without anybody' help on a clean white page in my composition notebook, I know If I wanted to I could write anything Letters becoming words, words gathering meaning, becoming thoughts outside my head becoming sentences written by Jacqueline Amanda Woodson

Before, you used to hear the word immigration and it sounded like everything you ever believed in. It sounded like feliz cumpleaños and merry Christmas and welcome home . But now you hear it and you get scared because it sounds like a word that makes you want to disappear. It sounds like someone getting stolen away from you.

I know in my heart , Tiago whispered, the language we like to speak is music and poetry and even cold, sweet piraguas on hot, hot summer days. But it feels like this place wants to break my heart. It feels like every day it tries to make my mom feel tinier and tinier, like the size of Perrito's head in my hands.

And it's not even strange that it feels the way it's always felt like the place we belong to. Like home.