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Writing Quotes by Henry Louis Gates

8 Writing quotes by Henry Louis Gates

All Writing quotes Henry Louis Gates’s page

Gates’ eight quotes on writing reflect his deep engagement with history and identity. The snippets offer a concise look at how he weaves cultural context into narrative, making this a thoughtful entry point for readers interested in nuanced storytelling.

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The act of writing for the slave constituted the act of creating a public, historical self, not only the self of the…

Henry Louis Gates

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The first slave to read and write was the first to run away.

Henry Louis Gates

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My father, if anything, first and last, was a man of words. He loved stories; he didn't live for stories, exactly, but…

Henry Louis Gates

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Learning to sing one's own songs, to trust the particular cadences of own's voices, is also the goal of any writer.

Henry Louis Gates

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Arnold Rampersad's stunningly revealing biography has, at long last, unveiled-in magisterial prose-the very complex and vulnerable man behind Ralph Ellison's own masks…

Henry Louis Gates

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Insofar as we, critics of the black tradition, master our craft, we serve both to preserve our own traditions and to shape…

Henry Louis Gates

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An impressively researched and documented collection of the finest thought produced by writers throughout the African Diaspora. A magnificent achievement.

Henry Louis Gates

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Very few Black people ever embraced back to Africa movements, and very few actually, a tiny number actually went back to Africa.…

Henry Louis Gates

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In Ethiopia, the black people became Christians 1700 years ago, hundreds of years before Northern Europe turned to Christianity... And here, most of the…

Henry Louis Gates

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I don't think the riots derailed the civil rights movement.

Henry Louis Gates

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Politicians will not put forth programs aimed at the problems of poor blacks while their turnout remains so low.

Henry Louis Gates

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I'm a tech geek. Whenever I read about something new, I think to myself, How can I take this and make it black?

Henry Louis Gates

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I think that the implication of King's assassination has not been fully appreciated.

Henry Louis Gates

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I want to be remembered as someone who tried to bring the story of our ancestors to the broadest possible audience. I want to…

Henry Louis Gates

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In 1957, when I was in second grade, black children integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. We watched it on TV. All…

Henry Louis Gates

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Since the day Martin Luther King was killed, the black middle classes have almost quadrupled, but the percentage of black children living on or…

Henry Louis Gates

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Diversity doesn't mean black and white only.

Henry Louis Gates

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Because Lincoln is so closely identified with what it is to be American, everyone wants to claim him, to rewrite his story to satisfy…

Henry Louis Gates

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My grandfather was coloured, my father was Negro, and I am Black.

Henry Louis Gates

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Wherever you go in the history of America, there have been Black people making contributions, but their contributions have been obscured, lost, buried.

Henry Louis Gates

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The act of writing for the slave constituted the act of creating a public, historical self, not only the self of the individual author…

Henry Louis Gates

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You can say I had a severe case of 'Roots' envy. I wanted to be like Alex Haley, and I wanted to be able…

Henry Louis Gates

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In America one drop of black ancestry makes you black.

Henry Louis Gates

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