“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 must always ask yourself, Whose story am I missing? Whose voice was suppressed so that this voice could come forth? Once you have figured that out, you must find that story too. From there, you begin… — Yaa Gyasi Copy Share
“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 with Edward and Mrs. Boahen and sometimes with Esther, and so it had begun to seem to him like a word the white men brought with them when they first came to Africa. A trick their… — Yaa Gyasi Copy Share
“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
