How we cite our quotes: (Story.Section.Paragraph) or (Story.Paragraph)
Quote #7
Whoever saw that television program can now look at me standing on the corner waiting for a bus and not see me at all, but see instead a slave, a creature who would wear a chain and lock around my neck for a white person—in 1980!—and accept it. Enjoy it. (Letter.22)
The narrator's student has a strong reaction to a TV program that highlighted a lesbian couple in a sadomasochistic relationship. Their role-playing preference? Master and slave. For the narrator, it's especially unfortunate that the couple is interracial. Her student makes the point that as long as this stereotype exists, it harms women—and Black women in particular—in the wider community. Why? Because it dehumanizes them.
Quote #8
She found black men impossible to draw or paint; she could not bear to trace defeat onto blank pages. (Trip.1.14)
This is more about Sarah Davis than it is about the Black men she can't bear to paint. She comes to understand later that there is no objective truth in this belief. In fact, it's all in her perspective. It's the quiet dignity and strength of her grandfather standing by her father's grave that schools her on this subject and gives her the confidence to face the outside world—and her future.
Quote #9
Was he, in act, still his father's son? Or was he freed by his father's desertion to be nobody's son, to be his own father? Could he disavow his father and live? And if so, live as what? As whom? And for what purpose? (Trip.1.34)
Sarah Davis is asking all the questions now that her father is dead. The big one: how can she have a complete identity without access to her roots, to her past? The answer: she can't. It's a good thing she has a brother who can be her "door," keeping her grounded in her family while giving her wings to find her own life.