History and socio-economic inequality and all those things had, like, borne down upon my family and my community and really sort of narrowed our choices.
Interpretation
Historical and socio-economic factors restrict the opportunities available to individuals and communities.
This quote speaks to the profound impact of historical events and socio-economic disparities on the lives of individuals and their communities. Jesmyn Ward highlights how these forces have not only shaped her family's experiences but have also limited the choices and opportunities available to them, illustrating the interconnectedness of social justice and personal narratives.
In practice
In a discussion about systemic racism and its effects on community choices.
I always understood my ancestry, like that of so many others in the Gulf Coast, to be a tangle of African slaves, free men of color, French and Spanish immigrants, British colonists, Native Americans - but in what proportion, and what might that proportion tell me about who I thought I was?
In the South, there is more overt racism. It's more willfully ignorant and brazen. But it's not as if by moving I'm going to be able to escape institutionalized racism. It's not as though my life won't be twisted and impacted by racism anymore. It will.
The ugly heart of the South still beats with this idea that one group of people is worth less.
Katrina silenced me for two years. I wrote a 12-page essay on my experience in Katrina, and that's it. I didn't write anything for, like, two, two and a half years after Katrina hit because it was so traumatic.
Hip-hop, which is my generation's blues, is important to the characters that I write about. They use hip-hop to understand the world through language.
With all the main characters that I write, it's always very important to me that they have good and bad aspects of their personality. It's important to me that they're complicated and that they're human.
Our people could not talk with these white-faced men, but they used signs which all people understand.
It was sad, the imbalance of it all. Why do kids assume so much from one parent and hold the other to a lower, looser standard?
My mother said that we're so lucky to be women. It's not that men are weak. Men are men. We're two completely different animals.
If you would marry suitably, marry your equal.
Try honest to see things from the other person's point of view.
Proclaim the beauty and truth of the Christian message to a society which is tangent by confusing presentations of sexuality, marriage and the family.
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