“Maybe he wouldn't end up the kind of man who needed to use his body for work. Maybe he'd be a new kind of black man altogether, one who got to use his mind.” — Yaa Gyasi Copy Share Image
“he knew in his body, even if he hadn’t yet put it together in his mind, that in America the worst thing you could be was a black man. Worse than dead, you were a dead man walking.” — Yaa Gyasi Copy Share Image
“We believe the one who has the power. He is the one who gets to write the story. So when you study history, you… — Yaa Gyasi Copy Share Image
“Her trick is to make him think that he is king of the bush, but what does a king matter? Really, she is king… — Yaa Gyasi Copy Share Image
“How could he explain to Marjorie that he wasn’t supposed to be here? Alive. Free. That the fact that he had been born, that… — Yaa Gyasi Copy Share Image
“Yaw wasn't certain that he believed in forgiveness. He heard the word most on the few days he went to the white man's church… — Yaa Gyasi Copy Share Image
“I’m too old to go to America now. Too old for revolution, too. Besides, if we go to the white man for school, we… — Yaa Gyasi Copy Share Image
“If she slept, she would do so only lightly, dipping the ladle of sleep into the shallow pool of dreamland” — Yaa Gyasi Copy Share Image
“Aunty, they say that you make impossible things possible.” She laughed again. “Eh, but they say that about Anansi, about Nyame, about the white… — Yaa Gyasi Copy Share Image
“And in my village we have a saying about separated sisters. They are like a woman and her reflection, doomed to stay on opposite… — Yaa Gyasi Copy Share Image
“if we go to the white man for school, we will just learn the way the white man wants us to learn. We will… — Yaa Gyasi Copy Share Image
“On the first day of the second term, Yaw watched the new students amble in. They were always well-behaved children, these boys, having been… — Yaa Gyasi Copy Share Image
