Unit 4: Selection Vocabulary 5

I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

And so, although I grew up reading books about the baffling places where black people were treated badly for being black, race remained an exotic abstraction: It was Kunta Kinte.

I was angry that his behavior left Stephen bewildered, and for a long time I half-expected something similar to happen in other homes that displayed American flags.

“Ignorant” suggested that an affluent, educated American living in a Philadelphia suburb in 1999 did not realize that black people are human beings.

They believe that black people still encounter unpleasantness related to blackness but in benign forms and from unhappy people or crazy people or people with good intentions that are bungled in execution.

Although the way that blackness manifests itself in America has changed since 1965, the way that it is talked about has not.

They liked to hear me "speak pieces" and sing and wanted to see me dance the parse-me-la, and gave me generously of their small silver for doing these things, which seemed strange to me for I wanted to do them so much that I needed bribing to stop, only they didn't know it.

They deplored any joyful tendencies in me, but I was their Zora nevertheless.

Someone is always at my elbow reminding me that I am the granddaughter of slaves. It fails to register depression with me. Slavery is sixty years in the past. The operation was successful and the patient is doing well, thank you.

In the abrupt way that jazz orchestras have, this one plunges into a number. It loses no time in circumlocutions, but gets right down to business.

But in the main, I feel like a brown bag of miscellany propped against a wall. Against a wall in company with other bags, white, red and yellow. Pour out the contents, and there is discovered a jumble of small things priceless and worthless.