in-betweenness

quotes from we gon' be alright by jeff chang

"gloria anzaldua, george helm, and jessica hagedorn all realized that in-betweenness can create the stuff of epics. it is the mental geography through which we make the crossings that define us. it can also be a place of refuge. in hawai'i, pu'uhonua were sites of mercy, where a warrior on the wrong side of the battle might find safety, where fugitives might find absolution. there, in between the space of the gods and the space of humans, they might rehabilitate and redeem themselves through moral, spiritual, and physical work. but these places were never meant to be places of permanent separation or disengagement. you did not go into a pu'uhonua to leave the world but to someday return to it. unearned sanctuary is not a home."

"james baldwin's most revolutionary and misunderstood idea, notes the intellectual robin d.g. kelley, was that love is agency. 'for him it meant to love ourselves as black people; it meant making love the motivation for making revolution; it meant envisioning a society where everyone is embraced, where there is no oppression, where every life is valued - even those who may once have been our oppressors,' kelley wrote. this did not mean that blacks should capitulate before whiteness and systematic racism, but exactly the opposite. he wrote, 'to love all is to fight relentlessly to end exploitation and oppression everywhere, even on behalf of those who think they hate us.'"

"what does it mean that we are better able to see pain than love? that rage and conflict in art are perceived as deeply felt, while reconciliation and joy are dismissed as mere sentiment?"

"'grace implies freeing the bondage of the human spirit and suggests the breadth, scope, and depth of our humanity in the face of violence - acts that may be found in our everyday lives or reflected in public moments of collective grief,' [carrie mae] weems has written. 'grace is meant to activate us, to propel us, to challenge us to see what we might prefer to remain unseen, and to act where we have been complacent and unable to move.'"