Bookin' It in 2022

I finished 20 books in 2022.  The titles in bold were particularly influential, inspiring or intriguing.

1. Cack-Handed: A Memoir by Gina Yashere 
2. Can Black People Grow Hair? by Andrea Krystal 
3.  Call Us What We Carry: Poems by Amanda Gorman
4. Rainbow Warrior: My Life in Color by Gilbert Baker
5. Beyond the Gender Binary by Alok Vaid-Menon
6. High School by Sara Quin & Tegan Quin
7. Femme in Public by ALOK
8. Unfollow: A Memoir of Loving and Leaving Extremism by Megan Phelps-Roper
9. Unprotected: A Memoir by Billy Porter
10. Your Wound / My Garden by ALOK
11. If You Give a Pig the White House by Faye Kanouse
12. Nonbinary: Memoirs of Gender and Identity Edited by Micah Rajunov and Scott Duane
13. Joan Jett & The Blackhearts 40x40: Bad Reputation / I Love Rock-n-Roll
14. Long Time Coming: Reckoning with Race in America by Michael Eric Dyson
15. Bearing My Seoul by Taryn Blake
16. The Little Book of Pride: Love Is Love by Joanna Gray
17. Love Lives Here: A Story of Thriving in a Transgender Family by Amanda Jetté Knox
18. Enter the Blue by Dave Chisholm
19. Wolfpack: How to Come Together, Unleash Our Power, and Change the Game by Abby Wambach
20. Saint Peter and the Goldfinch: Poems by Jack Ridl

Quote of the Day

Regarding glass ceilings...I'm mostly bolstered by folks who create their own ceilings.  I'm less interested in banging down the door of some man who doesn't want me there.  I'm more about building my own house.

-- Ava DuVernay

Quote of the Day

Women have had to find themselves within content presented from the male perspective forever.  It's essential to flip this and allow men the opportunity to find themselves within content presented from a woman's perspective.

-- Abby Wambach, Wolfpack, p. ix-x

Quote of the Day

Recently, on a call with a company hiring me to teach about leadership, a man said, "Excuse me, Abby, I just need to ensure that what you present is applicable to men, too."

I said, "Good question!  But only if you've asked every male speaker you've hired if his message is applicable to women, too."

-- Abby Wambach, Wolfpack, p. ix

Quote of the Day

At a certain point, it's not so much about what you are capable of playing, but instead it's about what you choose to play -- what you want to sound like.

-- Dave Chisholm, Enter the Blue

Quote of the Day

A genius is the one most like himself.

-- Thelonious Monk

Quote of the Day

Hate is loud and violent, but it burns out quickly.  Love is quieter and slower, but more resilient.

-- Amanda Jetté Knox, Love Lives Here, p. 275

Quote of the Day

Once I was a little girl who was sunny, funny and charming.  My name meant "worthy of love," but the world made me feel anything but.  The light nearly went out of my life from hopelessness.  I came back from that, but I spent years keeping that light dim, just wanting to fit in and be accepted.  I wanted to be worthy of love, and I thought being like everyone else was the key.  Thankfully, life didn't let me keep believing that.  As it turns out, loving my family fiercely and unconditionally is what gives me the love I was craving.  Fighting for the rights of families like mine is one of the ways I've learned to love myself.  It's helped me let go of my past and heal by using what I've learned through trial and trauma ... My life reflects exactly who I am: unconventional.  And now I get to use what I've learned to help other people who are unconventional in their own ways.  It's the very best sort of life.

-- Amanda Jetté Knox, Love Lives Here, p. 266

Quote of the Day

... there is one good reason to discuss [gender-affirming] surgical procedures: for some, they are absolutely necessary and lifesaving.  If these procedures are never discussed -- if no one shares their importance -- it makes it easier for governments and insurance companies to deem them cosmetic and unnecessary.  Some of them already are.  As I've said before, trans people who need surgery but face long wait times or are unable to get it at all have an increased risk of suicide.  We need to keep these surgeries funded and make them more accessible.

-- Amanda Jetté Knox, Love Lives Here, p. 249

Quote of the Day

Our society is obsessed with trans people's genitals.  What is or isn't between a person's legs seems to govern how much we accept them, judge them or fear them.  We try to pass laws restricting where trans people can go to the bathroom, where they can change clothes, what shelters they can stay in and even what prisons should house them.

A journalist once asked my twelve-year-old about her future plans for surgery.  When I stepped in to stop it, the journalist turned to me and said, "Can I ask you about her plans, then?"

No, you cannot.  Fixating on a child's genitals is never appropriate, whether that child is trans or not.  That should be common sense.  Sadly, it isn't.  It's weird, and frankly a little creepy, how much people care.

-- Amanda Jetté Knox, Love Lives Here, p. 248

Quote of the Day

We don't need to guess at someone's gender to be kind.  In fact, it might be kinder and simpler if we don't.  

The world is changing.  More people are coming out than ever, and our society needs to evolve along with them.  Rather than insisting that trans and non-binary people meet cisgender criteria, let's change our ideas of gender and be more inclusive.  That would allow everyone -- trans and cis people alike -- to live with fewer restraints.  Change, I'm discovering, is refreshing.

-- Amanda Jetté Knox, Love Lives Here, p. 246

Quote of the Day

There are many genderless ways to greet people without being rude.  Here are a few samples:

"Hello, how are you today?"

"Hi!  Can I help you find anything?"

"Helllo, folks.  How's everyone doing today?"

"Are the two of you ready to order?"

-- Amanda Jetté Knox, Love Lives Here, p. 246

Quote of the Day

Most of us have been taught to assume someone is either a man or a woman.  We do this by picking up on physical characteristics, dress, voice and even subtle mannerisms.  We've done this for years in Western society, not realizing we were sometimes getting it wrong and causing real harm.

To complicate matters, we not only make these gender assumptions but also declare them as an act of respect.  Calling someone "sir," "miss" or the dreaded "ma'am" ... is strongly encouraged, if not outright enforced, in many customer-service jobs.  But because gender isn't as clear-cut as society once thought, it's time to start rethinking our ideas of politeness.

-- Amanda Jetté Knox, Love Lives Here, p. 245-246

Quote of the Day

The hate aimed at me and my family is ongoing.  I constantly remind myself that people who say needlessly cruel things about other people reveal more about themselves than they do about their targets.  Yes, the internet can be a brutal place, but it's also one of the best platforms we have to create change on a global scale.  So I remain visibly online with my family's blessing, telling our story and hoping to help that change along for the next family in transition.

-- Amanda Jetté Knox, Love Lives Here, p. 234

Quote of the Day

Many people like to share their opinions.  That's fine.  But I've learned that not all opinions are created equal.  If people of colour share their experiences with racism, that will always be more valid than white people telling everyone what they think of racism and its effects.  Why?  Because we can't fully know what it's like to go through something unless we've gone through it ourselves.

The same is true when it comes to straight and cisgender people sharing opinions about queer people.  When folks who have no lived experience make disparaging comments about my marriage to Zoe, her decision to transition and our support for our transgender teen, it makes it easier to disregard their opinions.  I can have opinions about New Zealand, but I've never been there, you know?

-- Amanda Jetté Knox, Love Lives Here, p. 233

Quote of the Day

... a lived experience is always more valid than an experience never lived.

-- Amanda Jetté Knox, Love Lives Here, p. 233

Quote of the Day

Alexis learned she should enter any space as if she belonged there, regardless of how people treated her.  She learned to expect respect, even if others aren't willing to give it easily.

-- Amanda Jetté Knox, Love Lives Here, p. 95

Quote of the Day

Exposure is important.  If you haven't experienced something personally and learned about it that way, the next best thing is to learn from someone who has.  

-- Amanda Jetté Knox, Love Lives Here, p. 94

Quote of the Day

Admittedly, calling the child I had known as my son for eleven years by female pronouns felt awkward at first.  But so had the first time I did squats at the gym, and now I do them without thinking.  Pronouns, I figured, were a lot like squats: I would trip all over them at first, but they would be easier with practice.

-- Amanda Jetté Knox, Love Lives Here, p. 73

Quote of the Day

When your world has been turned upside down a few times -- and especially when you suffer from sometimes crippling anxiety -- it's not unreasonable to want normal as your main course at the buffet of life.

-- Amanda Jetté Knox, Love Lives Here, p. 50

Quote of the Day

... it's hard to open up to someone if that someone is frustrated.  This is especially true if you are holding back on sharing a life-altering secret out of fear of your entire world falling apart.

-- Amanda Jetté Knox, Love Lives Here, p. 8

Quote of the Day

When writing about trans issues, cisgender people like me -- those of us comfortable with the gender we were assigned at birth -- should strive to make sure we write nothing that can damage an already marginalized community.

-- Amanda Jetté Knox, Love Lives Here, p. 2

Quote of the Day

We bend to remember the departed, then rise to embrace the living. 

-- Patti Smith

Quote of the Day

Don't accept the world as it is.  Dream of what the world could be -- and then help make it happen.

-- Peter Tatchell

Quote of the Day

When people tell you who they are, Maya Angelou famously advised, believe them.  Just as importantly, however, when people try to tell you who you are, don't believe them.  You are the only custodian of your own integrity, and the assumptions made by those that misunderstand who you are and what you stand for reveal a great deal about them and absolutely nothing about you.

-- Maria Popova

Quote of the Day

There will not be a magic day when we wake up and it's now okay to express ourselves publicly.  We make that day by doing things publicly until it's simply the way things are.

-- Tammy Baldwin, Millennium March for Equality, 2000

Quote of the Day

I know what I want, I have a goal, an opinion, I have a religion and love.  Let me be myself and then I am satisfied.  I know that I'm a woman, a woman with inward strength and plenty of courage.

-- Anne Frank

Quote of the Day

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.

-- Anne Frank

Quote of the Day

Something just won't let me wiggle free of my theological captivity to hope.  To be certain, it's not a vain hope, nor one that is fanciful.  Mine is rather a darker hope, one located in the guts of trauma and tragedy as I look on the suffering we have endured because of the pandemic of systemic racism and institutional oppression.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 222

Quote of the Day

... as we reckon with the crisis unleashed by George Floyd's death, we must reckon with the white comfort that permitted white folk to ignore other deaths like his for centuries.  Perhaps because of him, and Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Elijah McClain, Hadiya Pendleton, (Sandra Bland), and too many others to name, we will finally come to grips with white comfort and finally proclaim three words that are the very heartbeat of our country and culture, slowly, deliberately, and with appropriate emphasis: Black. Lives. Matter.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 215

Quote of the Day

It falls to genuine white allies to take to task as best they can the unprincipled white nationalists who morally manipulate the white masses.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 210

Quote of the Day

Today, perhaps one of the most useful ways white allies can challenge white comfort is to admit that the embrace of Donald Trump and his troubling ideas is duplicitous: whites want to distance themselves from the racist past while endorsing Trump's racist beliefs in the present day.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 209

Quote of the Day

We should all scrutinize our own worldviews and purge them as much as possible of the poisonous prejudices that plague our existence.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 207

Quote of the Day

Becoming a true ally of the Black fight for social justice means that white folk abide by a credo that complements the one that has served Black folk well: know your white folk.  In this instance, white folk must know their Black folk.  They must know the kinds of Black folk with whom they get along, who push and challenge them, who insist that they do their best, who offer them tough love and straight talk, who get squarely in the face of their white comfort and unmask its pretensions to solidarity even as it holds to unspoken privileges, unacknowledged biases, and unearned reassurances.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 206-207

Quote of the Day

Some Black folk are resentful of white authors, activists, and experts on race who, riding the wave of white wokeness, end up re-centering whiteness -- because white grief, shame, or guilt over past sins leads them to decry their unfortunate, even tragic exercise of privilege.  Thus, racial absolution highlights the bruised or repentant white person, and before you know it the conversation ceases to be about social change and racial justice, and the offending whiteness is once again at the center, while Blackness, as usual, is playing in the background.  There is real hurt involved: while Black folk are the true inspiration for woke white writers, they are denied the cultural legitimacy and financial windfall such folk reap once they hit the circuits to tell white folk to stop being white in the ways that Black writers have been saying for centuries.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 202-203

Quote of the Day

There are plenty of Black folk who claim exhaustion.  They say they aren't here to serve white folk, not here to educate them, not here to uplift them or to guide them on the path of racial righteousness.  They think that is just another way to preserve white comfort and that the most effective way for white folk to overcome their dependence on Blackness is to learn to swim without the aid of Black lifeguards.  Beneath that Black exhaustion is a sound reason and wide-awake rationale for such a stance.  After all, the argument goes, if white folk really wanted to learn about race, they could have done so long before now.  What can we teach them that they haven't already been able to learn?  What can we say that hasn't already been said?

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 201

Quote of the Day

... in order for white folk to surrender comfort and claim a true awakening, they must hear and not be defensive about Black claims of exhaustion.  And, come to think of it, there is (quite literally in the spelling, but of course also in the meanings, beyond etymology, that we bring to the world from the depth of our experience and imagination) rage at the heart of mirage, which is what results when the white illusion that things aren't as bad as we know they are wins out over our descriptions of the hurt and pain we see.  There is rage in tragedy, when our enormous anger is sparked by the racial catastrophe and chaos we endure.  But there is rage in courage, too, where we are motivated by our rage at the dying of the light to be braver than we might ordinarily be and to forge ahead and make things happen with our energy and determination.  And, yes, there is rage in encouragement, too, because when we are disgusted at injustice, we war against it while uplifting the spirits of those who are its greatest victims.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 200-201

Quote of the Day

This sheer Black exhaustion sometimes sounds like cranky disregard for white awakening when in fact it may only be our refusal to any longer consider white comfort.  It is also the old recurring fear that this awakening may not last, that even though this time seems different, it may not be.  White folk won't really stick with the hard work of genuinely reckoning with the racist past, and therefore we don't want to get too invested -- we don't want to get our hopes up too much.  Our cynicism may indeed be a form of hurt, of pain, of racial world-weariness, of emotional depletion, and of soul deflation that comes out as anger or even rage -- a rage that is still hopeful because it believes that rage might make a difference.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 199-200

Quote of the Day

... many Black folk are exhausted: worn out by the cumulative injuries, quiet indignities, loud assaults, existential threats, microaggressions, macro offenses, and unceasing bombarding of our bodies and psyches in the name of white comfort.  Many of us would love nothing more than to take a nap and leave white folk to clean up the mess made by centuries of white comfort.  That, too, is a form of dreaming while awake, or daydreaming -- the only kind of dreaming we can afford.  This is why Langston Hughes strung together magical words of poetry about dreaming and why Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed out loud for the world to hear in Washington, D.C., in 1963.  This is why King was forever tired, his weary southern cadence haunted by the somber melodies of sleeplessness.  King's lieutenant Andrew Young said he waged "a war on sleep."  King warned the nation of the difficulty of "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution," although he was made sleepless by his worry that white folk wouldn't create a just society.  King realized that his life was too great a luxury for the guardians of white comfort, mostly because his dream didn't stop in 1963 but rather led him to far more radical visions of economic justice.  Like King, most of us must maintain what runaway slave and abolitionist William Parker called "sleepless vigilance."

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 198-199

Quote of the Day

... while white folk are in many instances just waking up,  Black folk have been awake -- "woke" -- for centuries, and although that's a necessary virtue, it's also a huge burden.  We have been under attack for so long that we dare not close our eyes even for a minute.  We have had one long case of racial insomnia, watching over our families and communities, protecting them until a morning that never seems to come because there's always some other nightfall descending, some other consequence of white comfort that keeps us on the run, on the watch -- say, a dislike for affirmative action because it makes white folk uncomfortable to give up even a little unearned advantage, or a disdain for Black neighbors and the discomfort of encountering Black faces while fetching the morning paper.  And when we managed to catch a few winks, our sleep was either riddled with nightmares or interrupted by the alarming persistence of defenders of white comfort railing against the quest for Black relief.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 197-198

Quote of the Day

... it is only natural that after waking up, white brothers and sisters want to share that awakening.  But the comfort of being awakened on someone else's dime, on someone else's back, or in the case of George Floyd, on someone else's neck, must be brought up short with the realization that no matter how sincere such awakening is, it has arrived far into the history of Black people and our culture and struggle in this nation.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 196-197

Quote of the Day

... if white folk are serious about the siege of ignorance coming to an end, the sort of ignorance that helped to end (Sandra Bland's) life, then they've got to put themselves into uncomfortable circumstances; they must reject the comfort of ignoring the raw Black truth that Black folk must live with.  Such learning doesn't happen overnight; it can't be done in CliffsNotes version of Black identity.  White brothers and sisters must deliberately expose themselves to experiences that force them to grow.  They've got to swim in the pools of our thoughts and expressions, our resistance and rebellion, our tragedies and traumas, our arguments and disagreements, our joys and affections, our love and happiness.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 192

Quote of the Day

Caught between stereotypes and vast ignorance, many whites find that their knowledge of Black life is severely limited.  In sharp contrast, most Black folk are hardly surprised, though always proud, that Black people are diligent, ethical, and smart.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 192

Quote of the Day

... many whites believe they're doing a good thing when they single out Black folk for having traits they don't normally associate with Blackness: hard work, clean character, sparkling intelligence.  But that says more about white folk than Black folk.  Thus, to compliment some Black folk for showcasing excellence in a number of pursuits is to tell on one's skepticism that Black culture is the breeding ground for such habits and traits.  These figures and features of Black life are seen as "more than Black" -- not typically Black, hence not representatively Black, and thus not really Black at all.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 191-192

Quote of the Day

Some white folk have deemed the study of Black life and history uninteresting.  Some whites claim it is irrelevant to the larger American narrative, arguing that Black folk didn't have much to do with shaping the events of our history.  Some whites were never taught a sense of Black achievement in class or at home.  Others are unapologetically anti-Black and disdain the study of Black life.  Still others boast a negative literacy about Black life, what might be called an ill-literacy, in which the point of studying Black life is to take measure of its supposed social corruption and moral depravity -- to prove through myopic statistics that Black folk are plagued by greater social pathology, commit more crime, are less interested in education, don't behave well in public, are psychologically toxic and intellectually inferior, have dysfunctional family structures, ruin neighborhoods with their questionable values, and deserve their low status in society.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 189

Quote of the Day

... one of the greatest white comforts is not having to know anything about Black life.  There is little pressure to know its epic sweep and narrative grandeur, its political struggle and social triumph, its moral heroism and existential courage, its intellectual complexity and its transcendent cultural trajectory, all met by relentless resistance and outright hostility from a myriad of white forces.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 188

Quote of the Day

Jim Crow, and in many ways white life ever since, was constructed for white comfort: to keep Blacks and others from drinking at the same water fountains, eating at the same restaurants, riding on the same buses, sitting in the same classrooms, playing on the same diamonds, gridirons, or courts, worshiping in the same sanctuaries, and, God forbid, being buried in the same cemeteries, all because white folk believed that they were superior and that they should be spared the discomfort of having to be near what and whom they were better than.  And, just in case their heightened view of themselves proved to be false, they spared themselves the discomfort of confronting the ugly truth.  Thus they protected themselves from any contradictions of or challenges to these notions.  Where the South's brand of de jure segregation didn't work, the North's de facto separation proved just as good.  White folk were comforted, and that comfort kept them from knowing too much of anything that was worth knowing about Black life.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 185-186

Quote of the Day

It is a truth we have to confront amidst our national racial reckoning: so much of Black and Brown life, and that of Indigenous and Asian folk, too, has been lived with the imperative to reinforce white comfort.  Yes, white privilege, white innocence, and white fragility are real and must be acknowledged and grappled with.  But we must also confront white comfort, which is basically the arrangement of the social order for the convenience of white folk, one that offers them comfort as a noun, that is, ease and relief from pain or limits or constraints, and comfort as a verb, that is, taking action to console white grief or distress.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 184-185

Quote of the Day

Most white folk fail to get this when they ask, "Why don't you just cooperate?"  Besides the fact that most of us do cooperate, as countless videos prove, there's the larger issue of how one must suddenly contort one's bodily expressions and fold one's entire history and being into a made-for-white-comfort presentation: the Black person speaks when spoken to, says things loudly enough to be heard but not too loudly.  The margin of error is extremely tight in such high-octane situations.  It's just all too much.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 183

Quote of the Day

... the circumstance with cops is that they always have the gun, the badge, the baton, the authority, and the official stamp of approval.  And when they kill you, they have qualified immunity plus the unqualified support of the state and much of the white public, which just can't seem to understand that we are sick to our souls from the repeated cycle of death at the hands of cops.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 182

Quote of the Day

But when it comes to black life in America, there's only one conclusion I can reach about some white people: You don't care to put yourself in our shoes.  The consequences of this lack of imagination for black Americans are deadly....If you don't have much interest in how we live and love, you'll never understand what we're fighting to preserve....White people have never needed to exercise that kind of curiosity.  You've never had to.  You can live your whole lives without really considering how we live ours.  We, on the other hand, know you very well.  We've had to.  We had no choice.

-- Kasi Lemmons

Quote of the Day

Because there are painfully fewer creative outlets for Black folk in comparison to the dominant culture, far too big a burden is put on the television shows, plays, visual art, and books that do get circulated.  And this has characterized the discussion of Black culture from the beginning of this country.  When it comes to broadly circulated visual representation, the stakes are especially high -- and typically contradictory.  Every film must abide by strict standards and solve every issue: uplift the race but don't neglect the downtrodden, be positive and redemptive yet probe the dark dimensions of Black life, engage white supremacy but underscore Black agency, depict the trauma of slavery but show how slavery didn't exhaust our identities, renounce the politics of respectability but don't embarrass Black folk, embrace the streets but don't romanticize thugs, appreciate the diaspora but don't give too many parts to African actors.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 161-162

Quote of the Day

It seems with cancel culture that we lack a means of restitution or restoration, and willingness to endure the discomfort of growth.  We settle for snuffing out what we don't like.  But there is no progress if we simply cancel what contradicts our beliefs or ideals.  This, again, is white supremacy's methodology.  Genuine racial reckoning must assume that change is still possible.  The futility of cancel culture justice is that it wipes out the individual but leaves the system standing.  To paraphrase sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, we end up with, for instance, misogyny without misogynists.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 155-156

Quote of the Day

There is a real danger in giving up in a moment of serious reckoning.  The criminal justice system has too often failed women, failed to address sexual violence and much more.  Cancel culture takes matters into its own hands, offering the illusion of justice.  But we are confusing the manner of arriving at justice -- the careful method of weighing evidence, the articulation of broad principles of agreement -- with the poor outcomes we are often left with.  In the end, beyond arguments about methods and means is the crucial recognition that in a true democracy, things are often messy, that you often don't get what you want or deserve immediately, and that you have to constantly engage, protest, resist, and negotiate.  In short, you have to be an astute and careful citizen, like both Martin Luther King Jr. and Fannie Lou Hamer.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 152-153

Quote of the Day

Cancel culture is undeniably a judgment of our failure to address systemic and structural issues.  I understand its lure to the relatively powerless: it gives the illusion that we are finally having significant movement on serious issues that keep getting delayed or denied.  Is it any surprise that it is largely associated with sexism and racism, two of the biggest problems we can't seem to get a handle on?

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 152

Quote of the Day

One need not be religious at all to believe that we should be willing to give what we seek: charitable interpretations of behavior and a willingness to offer just appraisals of conduct with an eye toward fairness.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 149-150

Quote of the Day

To be sure, when leaders with fascist leanings gripe about cancel culture, they are griping about being held even slightly accountable in a democracy whose very principles they tout but effortlessly ignore.  Some powerful folk cry about the scourge of cancel culture when, for instance, they can no longer justify flying Confederate flags or praising Confederate statues as conscientious citizens bring them down.  When figures who abuse power are finally brought to justice because of the words or protests of the relatively powerless, then cancel culture may seem a good thing.  But those are the easy cases with straightforward results.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 148-149

Quote of the Day

It was white America that rejected [Martin Luther] King's vision of nonviolence -- not Black folk.  America wouldn't listen to what nonviolent Black folk said, so now they are speaking differently -- not violently, but far more aggressively.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 135

Quote of the Day

Those contrasting Black self-destruction with the quest for fair play and righteous conduct rarely stop to consider that when Black folk politely ask for justice, make calm arguments, try to reason with the powers that be, they are rarely heard.  When former professional quarterback Colin Kaepernick, as part of the Black "next," took a knee on the gridiron to highlight police brutality, the white "again" portrayed him as if he had attempted to send society to its death.  They went so far as to banish him from the National Football League.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 133-134

Quote of the Day

As for the rare folk who have destroyed property [in the anger that occasionally flares up in the streets], there is often the rebuttal: it makes no sense to destroy your own neighborhood.  But what does a neighborhood mean if a cop can come onto your street and -- in your case, dear sister Breonna (Taylor) -- into your home and kill you?  If you don't own your own body, what, in the end, do you really own?  Those flames seem unwarranted to many white brothers and sisters.  But when they decry Black self-destruction, they often ignore the systemic white destruction of Black life and neighborhoods.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 133

Quote of the Day

The powerful rise of the Black "next" in contemporary Black protest as we reckon with systemic racism has been met by the reactionary forces of the white "again," notably President Trump, who has commandeered military forces to descend on American cities in a profane violation of civic virtue and the rights of citizens to assemble and argue on their feet for the social good.  This president has set a political precedent that not even our most acidly conservative leaders have dared to establish.  The trumping up of false allegations against protesters -- that they are troublemaking anarchists, that they hate America, that they are the reason racial justice continues to be thwarted -- is part of the ratcheting up of racial bigotry.  It is a cynical summons of the biting words of white nationalism from a deep cesspool of racial intolerance -- a gesture that, in concert with the president's other politically destructive moves, has the nation teetering on the edge of the neofascist abyss.  The white "again" has rarely possessed a voice that echoes disdain for racial justice as loudly as Trump's.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 132-133

Quote of the Day

Black Lives Matter and most other Black freedom movements have attempted to address the vicious consequences of slavery's legacy in Black life: the theft of Black land, social opportunity, and social mobility; the prison industrial complex; inequities in education, employment, and housing.  All these have left many Black folk permanently poor, vulnerable to disease, socially dislocated, and resorting to crime, especially stealing food to feed families or engaging in other illegal activities to support kin.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 130-131

Quote of the Day

The revolutionary cries of Black Lives Matter rest upon a simple yet poignant foundation: that Black lives, which haven't mattered, should matter, and that we must reform the criminal justice system, greatly change if not abolish the police, and grapple with systemic racism.  

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 130

Quote of the Day

The white "again" is a refusal to let true democracy take hold.  Those who actually believe in this country are those who, out of utter frustration, civic humiliation, or racial solidarity, have taken to the streets to protest.  Those whose belief in America is shaky are the ones opposing Black citizens who simply want to enjoy the same rights they do, who want the same benefit of the doubt offered to them.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 118-119

Quote of the Day

In the social and political order, the Black "next" insists on the new, the hopeful, the transformative, often against any possibility of its realization.  The white "again" bitterly clings to the past.  If Black politics and the culture of "next" have often expressed the desire to make history anew, then the white world of the stubborn "again" holds fast to a highly selective version of the past.  The white "again" cloaks its centuries-long will to control Black bodies in talk of tradition and conserving values.  The white "again" seeks ways to deny Black progress.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 116

Quote of the Day

In many ways, the slave patrols, and later law enforcement, were the instruments of the state used to protect the theft of Black life and of the rights and privileges of full citizenship.  The police not only brutalized Black bodies but dented the armor of social equality and civil rights by threatening the physical safety, civic well-being, and political progress of Black culture.  If the state stole, the police protected its theft and discouraged rebellion against its unjust practices.  There is no greater sign of such efforts at ruthless containment as when the police flood the streets to meet and turn back Black bodies on the march for justice.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 113-114

Quote of the Day

The "we" that dots the Declaration of Independence gathers force and definition from stating not only what Americans were but what Americans were not: not British, not "merciless savages" like the Indians, and not "domestic insurrectionists" like the Black folk.  Yes, they, the royal "we," have always accused us, the disloyal "them" of rioting.  They said this even as they looted and rioted and rose up against the British folk they wanted to divorce.  Like them, we fought in Revolutionary times because we wanted to be free.  But our bonds with the nation were continually shredded.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 102-103

Quote of the Day

DEAR BREONNA TAYLOR, I don't even know where to begin.  I am outraged, like so many people are outraged, undoubtedly more folks than you might ever have imagined, that our democracy has failed you.  Three cops barged into your apartment in Louisville, Kentucky, with a no-knock warrant and murdered you in cold blood.  They didn't even identify themselves as police, and to compound the tragedy, they had the wrong person and the wrong house.  Yet the police officer who killed you was neither arrested nor charged, and the lone cop who was indicted was charged only with wanton endangerment of your white neighbor.  Your valiant boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired on the invaders, but he couldn't save you.  And while the city pledged to pay your family $12 million and implement changes to prevent future deaths by cops, your killer remains free and justice is denied.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 99-100

Quote of the Day

Our country was built on looting -- the looting of Indigenous lands and African labor.  African-Americans, in fact, have much more experience being looted than looting.... White mobs, often backed by the police, not only looted and burned black homes and businesses but also maimed and killed black people.  Our bodies were loot.  The forced extraction of our labor was loot.  A system of governance that suppressed our wages, relieved us of property and excluded black people from equal schools and public accommodations is a form of looting.

-- Robin D. G. Kelley

Quote of the Day

Still, as George Floyd's death suggests, the knees of the nation have been on the necks of Black America for centuries.  It took a Black man's suffering and suffocated body to pump oxygen into the body politic so that we might all breathe.  But we can't stop here.  Unless white folk grapple with how they have harmed the pasts and stolen the futures of Black folk, they won't be able to claim that they have participated in a true reckoning with racial oppression in America.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 95-96

Quote of the Day

When we saw the video of George Floyd's killing, something in Black folk snapped.  We realized, again, that nothing we have done has stopped the cops from taking our lives.  In that moment it all came crashing down on us: Cops are the state.  Cops are the white society that see us as animals.  Cops are judge and jury and may execute us at will.  Thus we are all vulnerable.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 95

Quote of the Day

Police departments often encourage a bunker mentality of "us against the world."  If they are forced to share economic and informational resources with other stakeholders in public safety, we can facilitate a transition from a sense of strict ownership reinforced by territorial domains to a cooperative enterprise driven by public service.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 94

Quote of the Day

If we take into account the most exigent demands of community protection, as well as the relatively small percentage of emergency interventions that are presently called for, especially in beleaguered inner-city communities, we may be able to do two things.  First, we can reconstruct the administrative infrastructure of policing so that the chain of command is shared with multiple agencies of safety and protection.  Second, we can redesign the architecture of police units and disperse their duties across a number of agencies while decentralizing both their composition and their authority.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 93

Quote of the Day

The harmful persistence of police brutality suggests that no amount of community policing, civilian review boards (even with extensive oversight), presidential commissions on policing, or the like has much of a chance to succeed.  Police unions across the nation have accumulated enormous power and continually undermine efforts to rein in the abuse of authority by police.  So it seems worth a try to approach the abolition of policing with a mind to rearrange internal relations between police departments and other agencies that address needs -- especially mental health -- presently gathered under the rubric of policing.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 93

Quote of the Day

When it comes to the police, many of these communities, and the politicians who serve them, might well adapt President Clinton's phrase about affirmative action: mend, don't end, policing.  Mend the hurtful gap between law enforcement and people of color so that cops become servants of the community's best interests while protecting community members from the neighborhood's worst impulses.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 92

Quote of the Day

(George Floyd's death) was preceded by too many Black deaths to name, too many Black deaths to absorb, too many Black deaths to remember, too many Black deaths to account for, too many Black deaths to obsess over.  Forcing Black folk to obsess over death saps our power and distracts us from the full pursuit of life.  In the wake of such an obsession, Black life slowly and imperceptibly ebbs away, slipping through the cracks while hardly anyone beyond our culture pays attention.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 59

Quote of the Day

"Black is beautiful" rang out in the sixties, "I am somebody" echoed in the seventies, and "Black lives matter" resonates in our day.  More than slogans or hashtags, these are verbal efforts to stave off the terror of dead Black bodies.  Please remember that, white brothers and sisters, the next time one of your friends argues that "all lives matter."

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 44

Quote of the Day

The recording of Walter Scott being cut down was so terrifying because it was completely random.  Is that not the point of terror, to make us all fear that any of us at any time might be its victim?  I have said this before, in books, in sermons, in speeches, and in lectures, and it bears repeating here, again, because its truth is still not clear ... to be Black in America is often to feel under siege, to feel, in the marrow of our bones, genuine terror.  To feel that no matter how much education or money we have, how nice a car we drive, how well behaved we are, how disarming and articulate we prove ourselves to be, at any moment we might feel a baton crushing our skull, a Taser sending a jolting message to our nervous system, a bullet penetrating our flesh.  All because, and for no other reason than, we are Black.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 41

Quote of the Day

The development of new technology has permitted the truth of Black life to circulate far beyond our culture.  This is particularly helpful when Black folk have had the nearly impossible task of convincing the world that what we say about how we are treated is true.  

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 35

Quote of the Day

The myth of Blacks as dangerous showed up in slavery, and in the Confederacy, when white supremacy took to horseback.  It showed up, too, in Reconstruction's Black Codes, aimed at restricting Black mobility, and in sharecropping, where the slave plantation was reborn.  The idea showed up as well during Jim Crow when oppression flowed in segregated water fountains, hotels, bars, and swimming pools.  When we resist such efforts, it seems to confirm white fears.  Our effort to shake off white obstruction and move forward reinforces the belief that we are dangerous animals in need of policing by white society.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 30-31

Quote of the Day

... the malevolent pursuit of Ahmaud (Arbery) reveals another bruising paradox in Black life: even as quarters of white America loathe Black bodies, there is at once a lust for Blackness -- yes, to control it, but also to get inside it, to be near something grudgingly admired.  To be sure, it is the sort of admiration one has for any animal that is threatening, as one marvels at its strength and cunning, its pluck and crafty ingenuity.  Such prowess is cheered when it flashes on the athletic field.  When it ranges beyond the arena, it is feared, even stalked, subdued, and, if necessary, killed.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 30

Quote of the Day

I think of (Emmett Till), a boy I never met, far more often than I should, far more than any of us who never met you should.  Not because we shouldn't care about the fate of a boy we never met, but because the death of a boy we never met has taken on such outsize meaning.  It reminds us always that boys like you, boys like we were, boys who are now ours, too, are just as vulnerable sixty-five years later.  It is beyond absurd that the slightest perceived offense in the white mind should have such fatal consequences then or now.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 12

Quote of the Day

Black death has hounded us from 1619 to this day.  The theft of our bodies and futures, and our culture too, has offered the country unimaginable wealth, stability, and enjoyment.  The blue plague has descended on our communities, the police bringing us terror from the plantation to the pavement.  The wiles of white supremacy have seduced us, teaching us to hate and despise each other, and to take a cheap discount on justice, in ways that dishonor our best traditions.  Black bodies have been killed and progress has been stalled to provide white comfort.  But still, despite everything, we have continued, must continue, to hope.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 7-8

Quote of the Day

Dear Elijah [McClain], we are about to see if it is true that we are one, to see if your death and those of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Hadiya Pendleton, Sandra Bland, Clementa Pinckney, and untold others are viewed as worthy of the moral revulsion and, from there, the change of practice and belief that would prove a real reckoning is taking place.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 7

Quote of the Day

My fellow Americans, I beg of you, first consider this: Do you realize how much faith it takes for me and those like me to write "my fellow Americans?"  Do you realize how much energy it takes to summon the will to say those words?  Do you realize how weary I am, how weary we are, millions of Black folk in this country -- and right from the start it's a troubled we, a complicated we, a disrupted we -- of being denied recognition as Americans or even as human beings?  Do you know that so many Black folk are still full of love for the nation that so often treats us so poorly?  We are used to hearing presidents say "my fellow Americans," a phrase composed of a pronoun, adjective, and noun, to suggest the bond we share as citizens.  Grammar is one thing, citizenship an entirely different affair.  Has the sentiment ever really been true for Black folk?  Do we really live in the same country as white folk?  Do we see the same things?  Do we experience the same realities?  Is our nation's motto fully realized: E pluribus unum, "Out of many, one"?

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 6-7

Quote of the Day

When my sons were in high school and pictures of Philando Castile were on the front page of the Times, I wanted to burn all the newspapers so they would not see the gun coming in the window, the blood on Castile's T-shirt, the terror in his partner's face, and the eyes of his witnessing baby girl.  But I was too late, too late generationally, because they were not looking at the newspaper; they were looking at their phones, where the image was a house of mirrors straight to Hell.

-- Elizabeth Alexander

Quote of the Day

Black men, Black women, Black kids, we are terrified.... You have no idea how that cop that day left the house.... You don't know if he had an argument at home with his significant other.  You don't know if his kids said something crazy to him and he left the house steaming.  Or maybe he just left the house thinking that today is going to be the end of one of these Black people.  That's what it feels like.  It hurts.

-- LeBron James

Quote of the Day

Creativity is the ability to toggle between wonder and rigor to solve problems and produce novel value.

-- Natalie Nixon

Quote of the Day

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.

-- Oscar Wilde

Quote of the Day

I feel like I have been around the world and back again.  I speak to friends about retirement and they ask me if I want to travel.  I smile at their question and tell them no.  No, I've been places few have been to and many more will never know.  When I retire, I will write and read and walk and enjoy the sun on my face.  I am not driven anymore.

-- Kory Martin-Damon, Nonbinary Memoirs of Gender and Identity, p. 230

Quote of the Day

I am now on the cusp of my fifty-sixth year of life.  I have no concept, no idea, no definition of gender.  To me, women and men are equally strange and fascinating creatures.  How can you not question gender?  It seems so artificial to me ... Although I am still exhausted from my journey through gender, I have a deep sense of peace, fulfillment, and joy.  I've carved paths for myself in my search for language to define who I am, only to finally realize my sense of self cannot be caged by a word.  There is nowhere to go but inside, nothing to be but a human being.

-- Kory Martin-Damon, Nonbinary Memoirs of Gender and Identity, p. 230

Quote of the Day

To be punk is to be gender nonconforming, to fall outside cis standards of gender and beauty and acceptability.

-- Christopher Soto, Nonbinary Memoirs of Gender and Identity, p. 211

Quote of the Day

To be punk was to resist, to accept the burden of being gawked at in return for living a life of self-determination.

-- Christopher Soto, Nonbinary Memoirs of Gender and Identity, p. 209

Quote of the Day

I often think of my body as a gift from my family: like several of the gifts they've given me over the years, it's really not what I would have picked out for myself.

-- Nino Cipri, Nonbinary Memoirs of Gender and Identity, p. 205

Quote of the Day

I believe my parents would have been abusive regardless of their religious beliefs, but their religion fed and encouraged their abusive behaviors.  Most days my parents' abuse wasn't bad enough that Child Protective Services would have stepped in, had they known about it.  And my parents were white, college-educated, conservative Christians, so they received more slack from the system.  My parents just celebrated their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary.  But white picket fences and jade anniversaries are not always what they seem from a distance.  Sometimes, they're downright sinister.

-- Aubri Drake, Nonbinary Memoirs of Gender and Identity, p. 166

Quote of the Day

We establish no religion in this country.  We command no worship.  We mandate no belief, nor will we ever.  Church and state are and must remain separate.

-- Ronald Reagan

Quote of the Day

Thinking is difficult, that's why most people judge.

-- Carl Jung

Quote of the Day

We spend years posing as something we're not because we don't know what we are.  All we know is, we don't feel like the gender we're supposed to be, yet we can't find an alternative either.  Everywhere we turn we get reminded that most of the world has extreme trouble with thinking outside the confines of binary labels.

-- Cal Sparrow, Nonbinary Memoirs of Gender and Identity, p. 146

Quote of the Day

Children are wonderfully honest and direct; when adults can't figure out my gender without asking, they react with embarrassment, irritation, and, sometimes, anger.  These reactions used to confuse me.  Why embarrassment and anger?  What had I done to them?  I finally realized that confusion and embarrassment are onramps for fear -- fear that we don't know what's going on, fear that others will mock us for that ignorance, fear that we'll embarrass ourselves by incorrectly gendering someone and have to deal with their anger or the derision of our peers.  My androgyny didn't threaten them physically, but the confusion it caused translated into an emotional threat.  For people who cling to their worldviews like life rafts, having that worldview challenged is a threat.  And I have found that people who cling to biology-based binary gender are very threatened by those of us who cross gender lines or don't believe in those lines at all.

-- CK Combs, Nonbinary Memoirs of Gender and Identity, p. 97

Quote of the Day

None of the public debates or discussions about gender and crime or about access to public facilities includes me or others like me.  Transgender men and women who visibly conform to the gender binary have been at the center, with more and more policies allowing them to use facilities that match their gender identity.  But this still leaves genderqueer individuals without much assurance of safety or protection.  To ensure that I can exist in public space without risk to my physical or emotional well-being, we need to promote gender-neutral or non-gendered spaces.

-- Jace Valcore, Nonbinary Memoirs of Gender and Identity, p. 81

Quote of the Day

I represent  one idea and one idea only: how to be you.  Over the years I have become an emblem and example of how we can all embrace and accept who we are.  I am genderfluid and I accept that.  If you are a Man and you love that word, if it feels comfortable, I want you to enjoy that about yourself.  I want you to be you.

-- Jeffrey Marsh, Nonbinary Memoirs of Gender and Identity, p. 76-77

Quote of the Day

When I was a kid it was astonishing that people viewed me as a Man when I was so clearly a Disney Princess.  But, I never really thought of myself as a Woman.  When I was a kid I had a genderless view of myself.  And this ungendered view is the essence of gender equality; it is the essence of people equality.

-- Jeffrey Marsh, Nonbinary Memoirs of Gender and Identity, p. 76

Quote of the Day

To this day interviewers ask me, "When did you know you were different?"  I use that question to make a broader point: I never felt that I was different.  Deep down, all of us want the same things -- we are all so very much alike.  We want acceptance and freedom and recognition and happiness.  So I never felt different in the context of whether or not I was a part of humanity.  I never realized I was different because I could plainly see that I wasn't.  What I did realize (and what I couldn't comprehend or articulate as a kid) is that people treated me differently.  I knew that I was just like everyone else, but the way I am and they way I express myself seemed to be a huge problem for everyone else.  People could never let me be, and it was incredibly mysterious.

-- Jeffrey Marsh, Nonbinary Memoirs of Gender and Identity, p. 75

Quote of the Day

If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.

-- Harvey Milk, from a tape recording to be played in the event of his assassination

Quote of the Day

A gay person in office can set a tone, command respect, not only from the wider community but from the young people in our own community who need both examples and hope.

-- Harvey Milk, The Little Book of Pride: Love Is Love, p. 103

Quote of the Day

Freedom is too enormous to be slipped under a closet door.

-- Harvey Milk

Quote of the Day

Acceptance by some people doesn't make all the hostility of our inflexible systems and norms go away.  And since nonbinary people are invisible in most data collection, it is hard for our voices to be heard.  The irony of this hypervisibility is that while my body and identity may be open to public comment, my thoughts and needs don't seem to matter.

-- Haven Wilvich, Nonbinary Memoirs of Gender and Identity, p. 62

Quote of the Day

Genderqueer is such a broad category, a subset of nonbinary transgender identities that often emphasizes the rejection of social norms and gender roles.  It's meant to subvert and not conform.  It means living in the gray area between the binary genders and asking a lot of questions.

-- Haven Wilvich, Nonbinary Memoirs of Gender and Identity, p. 61

Quote of the Day

Being a token can be misleading at first.  It can make you feel wanted, admired, and special.  Who doesn't want to feel that way, especially after a lifetime of not feeling seen or validated?  You hear the message "We really value your unique perspective," which really means "You have something we want from you!"  I have to admit that I've been lured in by this message, along with my own savior complex and sense of over-responsibility.  When you become a token, it's hard not [to] feel owned by a system that continually pats itself on the back for being so open-minded and progressive for hiring you while simultaneously putting you in your place.  Good intentions say nothing about a system's capacity to change.

-- Sand C. Chang, Nonbinary Memoirs of Gender and Identity, p. 55

Quote of the Day

I have to remind people that "nonbinary" predates "binary" in many respects; those of us who don't fit the expectations for what is "masculine" or "feminine" have existed across almost every continent, going back centuries.  But one of the impacts of colonization is that histories are forgotten, and not by accident, violently muffled until they don't make a sound.

-- Sand C. Chang, Nonbinary Memoirs of Gender and Identity, p. 55

Quote of the Day

Workplaces tend to be reactive when it comes to accommodating trans and nonbinary folks.  They wait until a trans or nonbinary person gets hired, then they scramble to figure out how to make the environment safe and accessible.  In my ideal world, workplaces would do the work before a trans person gets hired or even before they are interviewed.  They would figure out their HR policies, restroom facilities, and documentation (e.g., name badges, email addresses, electronic records, computer user accounts) ahead of time.  There is always the chance of having employees who do not disclose their trans status or identity, so waiting for the first "out" or vocal trans person to report problems is not really an equitable approach.

-- Sand C. Chang, Nonbinary Memoirs of Gender and Identity, p. 53-54

Quote of the Day

For lesbians and gay men have always been in the vanguard of struggles for liberation and justice in this country and within our communities ... This is the beginning of a new front.  We are saying to the world that the struggle of lesbians and gay men is a real and particular and inseparable part of the struggle of all oppressed people within this country.  I am proud to raise my voice here as a black lesbian feminist committed to struggle for a world where all our children can grow free ... Not one of us will ever be free until we are all free.

-- Audre Lorde, speaking at the March for Lesbians and Gay Rights, 1979

Quote of the Day

Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life.  The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray.

-- Lord Byron, The Little Book of Pride: Love Is Love, p. 92

Quote of the Day

Our job as gay people was to come out, to be visible, to live in the truth, as I say, to get out of the lie.  A flag really fit that mission, because that's a way of proclaiming your visibility or saying, "This is who I am!"

-- Gilbert Baker, The Little Book of Pride: Love Is Love, p. 87

Quote of the Day

There is nothing more lovely in life than the union of two people whose love for one another has grown through the years, from the small acorn of passion, into a great rooted tree.

-- Vita Sackville-West, The Little Book of Pride: Love Is Love, p. 59

Quote of the Day

The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.

-- Jane Addams, The Little Book of Pride: Love Is Love, p. 44

Quote of the Day

The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.

-- Somerset Maugham, The Little Book of Pride: Love Is Love, p. 17

Quote of the Day

Dear brothers and sisters, dear gay family...isn't it time we began to appreciate that it is one of mother nature's great gifts to us to be different.  I have always felt it was a great gift to be gay.

-- Harry Hay, The Little Book of Pride: Love Is Love, p. 15

Quote of the Day

When insecurity and resentment creeps in, I am reminded that nothing about being queer is easy, but it is always creative and reinventing.

-- Michal Jones, Nonbinary Memoirs of Gender and Identity, p. 28

Quote of the Day

Today, I straddle the borders of being not comfortable in women's spaces, yet not being fully seen as trans, with growing patience and acceptance for my own truth.  Today, my rejuvenated spirit has learned to breath under pressure.  Today, I live in a liminality that is on neither side of the binary but all encompassing and surpassing it.  "Both man and woman," I am all and none of these things.  I've always lived in this space, and am grateful that language is slowly emerging for folks who feel this way.  Occupying this space is a constant coming-out process...

-- Michal Jones, Nonbinary Memoirs of Gender and Identity, p. 28