There were many deficits in our swamp education, but Grandpa Sawtooth, to his credit, taught us the names of whole townships that had been forgotten underwater. Black pioneers, Creek Indians, moonshiners, women, 'disappeared' boy soldiers who deserted their army camps. From Grandpa we learned how to peer beneath the sea-glare of the 'official, historical' Florida records we found in books. "Prejudice, " as defined by Sawtooth Bigtree, was a kind of prehistoric arithmetic--a "damn, fool math"--in which some people counted and others did not. It meant white names on white headstones in the big cemetery in Cypress Point, and black and brown bodies buried in swamp water. At ten, I couldn't articulate much but I got the message: to be a true historian, you had to mourn amply and well. Karen Russell
Some Similar Quotes
  1. Love is too precious to be ashamed of. - Laurell K. Hamilton
  2. It's not at all hard to understand a person it's only hard to listen without bias. - Criss Jami
  3. There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action. - Unknown
  4. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. - Unknown
  5. You can't dwell on what might have been...and it's not fair to condemn him for something he hasn't done. - Wendelin Van Draanen
More Quotes By Karen Russell
  1. There is a rustle of dead leaves. Dried sap, a branch crack, the whirring teeth of Mr. Omaru's saw. My father--my real father--is a limb that got axed off the family tree a long time ago now. My mother coughs and cleans phantom juices off...
  2. I dropped the candies into the children's bags, thinking: You small mortals don't realize the power of your stories.
  3. Mothers burning inside the risen suns of their children.
  4. Even if she’d [Ossie] gotten away from him [her ghost fiancé] the prognostications were grim–alligators with unusual pigmentation can’t camouflage themselves in the dust-and-olive palette of the swamp. Their skin is spotlit for predators. That’s why you don’t see albino Seths [Ava’s pet name for...
  5. I look for my sister but it's hopeless. The goggles are all fogged up. Every fish burns lantern-bright, and I can't tell the living from the dead. It's all just blurry light, light smeared like some celestial fingerprint all over the rocks and the reef...
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