How we cite our quotes: (Story.Section.Paragraph) or (Story.Paragraph)
Quote #7
(And I began to think that perhaps—whether Luna had been raped or not—it had always been so; that her power over my life was exactly the power her word on rape had over the lives of black men, over all black men, whether they were guilty or not, and therefore over my whole people.) (Luna.41)
Walker is massively torn over her response to Luna's claim of rape. At issue: the power that white female voices have over the lives of Black men, innocent or not. This isn't just an issue for Black men; it affects the entire Black community, especially when Black women have to risk themselves to protect their men. And because of this power dynamic, a wedge is driven between Luna and Walker, whose friendship fails after the story of the rape comes out.
Quote #8
I wanted them to be able to repudiate all the racist stereotypes about black women who were enslaved: that they were content, that they somehow "chose" their servitude, that they did not resist. (Letter.12)
Susan Marie tries to contextualize her anger to Lucy, a colleague who annoyed her by dressing up as slave-owning Scarlett O'Hara for a campus ball. For one thing, Lucy's timing was bad: Susan Marie and her students had just suffered a kind of setback in their progress in tearing down this stereotype—and Lucy was there in her costume to pour salt in the wound. The message Susan Marie wants to send to her is simple: slavery was not fun, and slaves did not enjoy it. It seems like a "duh!" moment, but Lucy clearly doesn't get it.
Quote #9
The defeat that had frightened her in the faces of black men was the defeat of black forever defined by white. But that defeat was nowhere on her grandfather's face. (Trip.4.2)
Sarah Davis is a talented artist, but she's spent her life avoiding Black men as a subject in drawing or painting. She's been hurt by the lopsided depictions she's seen her whole life—and by her own perception of her father. But when she sees the dignity and strength in her grandfather's face, she realizes she's got it wrong. She needs to empty her mind of a biased gaze so that she can see the men in her life accurately.