Artists are not cheerleaders, and we're not the heads of tourism boards. We expose and discuss what is problematic, what is contradictory, what is hurtful and what is silenced in the culture we're in.
Junot DiazRead
My father was a Little League dictator. That really affected me, his control-freakery, his impunity, his arbitrary unreasonable power.
Interpretation
The quote explores the impact of a father's controlling nature on his child's development.
In this quote, Junot Diaz reflects on his childhood experience with a father who exerted authoritarian control over him, likening his father's behavior to that of a dictator. This portrayal suggests that such domineering traits instilled in him feelings of oppression and shaped his understanding of authority and power dynamics, highlighting the profound influence parental behavior can have on a child's emotional and psychological growth.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about parenting styles and their effects on children.
Artists are not cheerleaders, and we're not the heads of tourism boards. We expose and discuss what is problematic, what is contradictory, what is hurtful and what is silenced in the culture we're in.
Run a hand through your hair, like the white boys do, even though the only thing that runs easily through your hair is Africa.
I can see myself watching him shave every morning. And at other time I see us in that house and see how one bright day (or a day like this, so cold your mind shifts every time the wind does) he will wake up and decide it's all wrong. I'm sorry, he'll say. I have to leave now.
Migration gives a blank cheque to put anything you don't feel like addressing in the memory hold. No neighbours can go against the monster narrative of your family.
We all dream dreams of unity, of purity; we all dream that there's an authoritative voice out there that will explain things, including ourselves.
I think 90% of my ideas evaporate because I have a terrible memory and because I seem to be committed to not scribble anything down. As soon as I write it down, my mind rejects it.
The way to plan the family is natural family planning not contraception. In destroying the power of giving life, through contraception, a husband or wife is doing something to self, and so it destroys the gift of life in him or her
I am most anxious to give my own children enough love and understanding so that they won't grow up with an aching void in them--like you and I and Harold and Martha. That can never be filled, and one goes around all one's life trying, trying to make up for what one didn't get that was one's birthright, asking the wrong people for it.
Enjoy your children, even when they don't act the way you want them to.
My father is the man that, he will give you what he doesn't have, still. If he has 10 bucks and you need 10 bucks because you're sick or you don't have nothing to eat, he will give you 10 bucks. He will be at zero, but he will help you. That's the kind of man that my father is.
I shall never forget my mother, for it was she who planted and nurtured the first seeds of good within me. She opened my heart to the lasting impressions of nature; she awakened my understanding and extended my horizon and her percepts exerted an everlasting influence upon the course of my life.
I love my family, even as I critique their dysfunctionalities.
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