I was taught you don't tell your secrets to strangers - certainly not secrets that expose error, weakness, failure. My generation, like its predecessors, was taught that since our achievements received little notice or credit from white America, we were not to discuss our faults, lapses, or uncertainties in public.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of discretion in sharing personal vulnerabilities, especially in a societal context that may not be sympathetic.
Margo Jefferson's quote reflects on the lessons learned by her generation regarding the sharing of personal secrets and vulnerabilities. It suggests that, in a society where achievements of marginalized communities often go unrecognized, individuals are taught to keep their failures and uncertainties private. The fear of being judged or misunderstood by those outside their community fosters a culture of silence about personal struggles, emphasizing the need for caution in revealing one’s weaknesses to strangers who may not understand or empathize.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the importance of sharing personal struggles in a supportive environment.
We talk about how we think, believe, suspect Michael Jackson treats children. We don't talk about how WE treat child stars. Child stars are abused by the culture. And what's more treacherous than when the rewards of child stardom issue from the abuse?_x000D_ Child stars are performers above all else. Whenever their triumps, they are going to make sure we see everyone of their scars. That's the final price of admission.
I think it's too easy to recount your unhappy memories when you write about yourself. You bask in your own innocence. You revere your grief. You arrange your angers at their most becoming angles.
So much of what blacks and women contend with is centered in how we view, and how the world views, our bodies. Gestures, voices, affect.
Depression is so treacherous - it can be so alluring as well as punishing. After all, it's yours and yours alone - no one else can interfere with it.
I found literary idols in Adrienne Kennedy, Nella Larsen, and Ntozake Shange, writers who'd dared to locate a sanctioned, forbidden space between white vulnerability and black invincibility.
Black Power was really a major challenge to the social privileges and structures of the kind of privilege that I had grown up with. That whole belief... that you will only be able to advance if you are perfectly behaved, if you present yourself as what white people would consider an ideal of whiteness... all of that just began to burst open.
Depression can be the sand that makes the pearl. Most of my best _x000D_ work came out of it.
It is better to disappoint people with the truth than to appease them with a lie.
Anxiety is sort of the opposite of ego. You're so sure you'll do everything wrong you're afraid to do anything at all. It results from over-motivation- leading to errors that lead to an underestimation of one's self. Work out your anxieties on paper and read. This calms the mind.
And this gray spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
True wealth is not measured in money or status or power. It is measured in the legacy we leave behind for those we love and those we inspire.
Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.
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