Definitions Belong To The Definers, Not The

If You Can Only Be Tall Because Someone Else Is On Their Knees, Then You Have A Serious Problem. And White People Have A Very, Very Serious Problem.

All Of Us--all Who Knew Her--felt So Wholesome After We Cleaned Ourselves On Her. We Were So Beautiful When We Stood Astride Her Ugliness. Her Simplicity Decorated Us, Her Guilt Sanctified Us, Her Pain Made Us Glow With Health, Her Awkwardness Made Us Think We Had A Sense Of Humor. Her Inarticulateness Made Us Believe We Were Eloquent. Her Poverty Kept Us Generous. Even Her Waking Dreams We Used--to Silence Our Own Nightmares.

And They Beat. The Women For Having Known Them And No More, No More; The Children For Having Been Them But Never Again. They Killed A Boss So Often And So Completely They Had To Bring Him Back To Life To Pulp Him One More Time. Tasting Hot Mealcake Among Pine Trees, They Beat It Away. Singing Love Songs To Mr. Death, They Smashed His Head. More Than The Rest, They Killed The Flirt Whom Folks Called Life For Leading Them On.

Adults, Older Girls, Shops, Magazines, Newspapers, Window Signs—all The World Had Agreed That A Blue-eyed, Yellow-haired, Pink-skinned Doll Was What Every Girl Child Treasured

We Die. That May Be The Meaning Of Life. But We Do Language. That May Be The Measure Of Our Lives.