How we cite our quotes: (Story.Section.Paragraph) or (Story.Paragraph)
Quote #7
But assembly lines don't stop because the product on them has a complaint. Her doctor whistled, and assured her she was all right, and carried the procedure through to the horrific end. Imani fainted some seconds before that. (Abortion.32)
Although abortion is a legal procedure by the time Imani has her second one—and despite the fact that the facility is clean and welcoming—there's a kind of numbness to human suffering in the office. The lack of anesthesia is another assault on Imani's tired body, and it will be something that colors her response to the procedure in the weeks and years to come.
Quote #8
Whenever interracial rape is mentioned, a black woman's first thought is to protect the lives of her brothers, her father, her sons, her lover. A history of lynching has bred this reflex in her. (Luna.32)
Walker spends this entire story trying to work out a dilemma posed by Freddie Pye's rape of Luna: whom should she support and protect in this horrific scenario? While she believes Luna's account of the rape, there's still a part of her that wants to push back on her friend and deny that it could have happened.
Because of the violent history of lynchings of Black men in America—many of which were motivated by false accusations of rape—Walker finds a compassionate response to Luna slow in coming. In a truly just society, where a white woman's word doesn't have the power to destroy innocent Black men, she feels she could support Luna as she should.
Quote #9
[…] I was incensed to think of the hard struggle of my students to rid themselves of stereotype, to combat prejudice, to put themselves into enslaved women's skins, and then to see their struggle mocked, and the actual enslaved condition of literally millions of our mothers trivialized—because two ignorant women insisted on their right to act out publicly a "fantasy" that still strikes terror in black women's hearts. (Letter.19)
The two women Susan Marie refers to here are a lesbian couple featured on a TV show about sadomasochism. They are in a master-slave "relationship"—as if slaves had a great time being violently subjugated back in the day. Susan Marie argues that this is not acceptable, even in sex play, because it erases the centuries of violent history behind the image. It also makes it okay for others to see Black women as "happy slaves"—which any thinking person would know is not a thing that could exist.