“I focused, therefore, on how something as grotesque as the demonization of an entire race could take root inside the most delicate member of society: a child” “My mother’s anger humiliates me; her words chafe my cheeks, and I am crying.” “Sometimes their words move in lofty spirals; other times they take strident leaps, and all of it is punctuated with warm-pulsed laughter—like the throb of a heart made of jelly.” “What I felt at that time was unsullied hatred.” “It was a most uncomfortable, patently aggressive sleeping companion.” “Break off the tiny fingers, bend the flat feet, loosen the hair, twist the head around, and the thing made one sound—a sound they said was the sweet and plaintive cry “Mama,” but which sounded to me like the bleat of a dying …show more content…
Breedlove, Sammy Breedlove, and Pecola Breedlove—wore their ugliness, put it on, so to speak, although it did not belong to them.” “The low, irregular hairlines, which seemed even more irregular in contrast to the straight, heavy eyebrows which nearly met. Keen but crooked noses, with insolent nostrils. They had high cheekbones, and their ears turned forward.” “Concealed, veiled, eclipsed—peeping out from behind the shroud very seldom, and then only to yearn for the return of her mask.” “But the unquarreled evening hung like the first note of a dirge in sullenly expectant