Yaa Gyasi Quotes & Sayings

They had been products of their time, and walking in Birmingham now, Marcus was an accumulation of these times. That was the point. — Yaa Gyasi

Not the being lost, but the being found. It was the same feeling he got whenever he saw Marjorie. Like she had, somehow, found him. Months — Yaa Gyasi

[...] here "white" could be the way a person talked; "black," the music a person listened to. In Ghana you could only be what you were, what your skin announced to the world. — Yaa Gyasi

She tried to smile, but she had been born during the years of Esi's unsmiling, and she had never learned how to do it quite right. The corners of her lips always seemed to twitch upward, unwillingly, then fall within milliseconds, as though attached to that sadness that had once anchored her own mother's heart. — Yaa Gyasi

But the girl shook her head, clucked her tongue in distaste. 'If I marry him, my children will be ugly,' she declared.

That night, lying next to Edward in his room, Yaw listened as his best friend told him that he had explained to the girl that you could not inherit a scar.

Now, nearing his fiftieth birthday, Yaw no longer knew if he believed this was true. — Yaa Gyasi

It was the butt that had done it nineteen years ago, was still doing it now. He'd seen it coming around Strawberry Alley and had followed it four whole blocks. It was mesmerizing, the way it moved, independent of the rest of her body, as though operating under the influencer of another brain entirely, one cheek knocking into the other cheek so that that cheek had to swing out before knocking back — Yaa Gyasi

her grandmother reminding her how to come home. — Yaa Gyasi

The family is like the forest: if you are outside it is dense; if you are inside you see that each tree has its own position. — Yaa Gyasi

Took me a long time to figure out that you was born to a man who could choose his life, but you wouldn't never be able to choose yours, and it seemed like you was born knowing that. — Yaa Gyasi

I decided that for me, Akosua, I will be my own nation."
As James listened to her speak, he felt something well up inside him as it had never done before. If he could, he would listen to her speak forever. If he could, he would join that nation she spoke of. — Yaa Gyasi

A little black child fighting in her sleep against an opponent she couldn't name come morning because in the light that opponent just looked like the world around her. Intangible evil. Unspeakable unfairness. Beulah ran in her sleep, ran like she'd stolen something, when really she had done nothing other than expect the peace, the clarity, that came with dreaming. Yes, Jo thought, this was where it started, but when, where, did it end? — Yaa Gyasi

Marcus always nodded patiently when his father said things like this. Sonny was forever talking about slavery, the prison labor complex, the System, segregation, the Man. His father had a deep-seated hatred for white people. A hatred like a bag filled with stones, one stone for every year racial injustice continued to be the norm in America. He still carried the bag. — Yaa Gyasi

White men get a choice. They get to choose they job, they house. They get to choose to make black babies, then disappear into thin air, like they wasn't never there to begin with, like these black women they slept with or raped done laid on top of themselves and got pregnant. White men get to choose for black men too. Used to sell 'em; now they just send 'em to prison like my daddy, so that they can't be with they kids. — Yaa Gyasi

Now, hearing Tansi speak, Afua resumed her crying, but it was as though no one heard. These tears were a matter of routine. They came for all of the women. They dropped until the clay below them turned to mud. At night, Esi dreamed that if they all cried in unison, the mud would turn to river and they could be washed away into the Atlantic. — Yaa Gyasi

When someone does wrong, whether it is you or me, whether it is mother or father, whether it is the Gold Coast man or the white man, it is like a fisherman casting a net into the water. He keeps only the one or two fish that he needs to feed himself and puts the rest back in the water, thinking that their lives will go back to normal. No one forgets that they were once captive, even if they are now free. But still, Yaw, you have to let yourself be free. — Yaa Gyasi

Esi stared at her mother then, and it was as though she were seeing her for the first time. Maame was not a whole woman. There were large swaths of her spirit missing, and no matter how much she loved Esi, and no matter how much Esi loved her, they both knew in that moment that love could never return what Maame had lost. And Esi knew, too, that her mother would die rather than run into the woods ever again, die before capture, die even if it meant that in her dying, Esi would inherit that unspeakable sense of loss, learn what it meant to be un-whole. — Yaa Gyasi

Theirs was the kind of life that did not guarantee living. — Yaa Gyasi

Akua rested her head against a rock, and did not speak until she heard the girls' soft and sleepy breaths floating about her like tiny butterflies. — Yaa Gyasi

He felt the stone hit his chest, hard and hot, before finding its way up to the surface again. He touched it, surprised by its weight. Marjorie splashed him suddenly, laughing loudly before swimming away, toward the shore. — Yaa Gyasi

He was still amazed by it. Not by the fear he'd felt throughout the day, when the woman who was no more than a stranger to him had dragged him farther and farther from home, but by the fullness of love and protection he'd felt later, when his family had finally found him. Not the being lost, but the being found. It was the same feeling he got whenever he saw Marjorie. Like she had, somehow, found him. — Yaa Gyasi

Prayer was not a sacred or holy thing. It was not spoken plainly, in Twi or English. It need not be performed on the knees or with folded palms. For Akua, prayer was a frenzied chant, a language for those desires of the heart that even the mind did not recognize were there. — Yaa Gyasi

History is Storytelling. — Yaa Gyasi

No one forgets that they were once captive, even if they are now free. — Yaa Gyasi

When he finally lifted his head up from the sea to cough, then breathe, he looked out at all the water before him, at the vast expanse of time and space. He could hear Marjorie laughing, and soon, he laughed too. When he finally reached her, she was moving just enough to keep her head above water. The black stone necklace rested just below her collarbone and Marcus watched the glints of gold come off it, shining in the sun. "Here," Marjorie said. "Have it." She lifted the stone from her neck, and placed it around Marcus's. "Welcome home. — Yaa Gyasi

As she sang, she saw the notes float out of her mouth like little butterflies, carrying some of her sadness away, and she knew, finally, that she would survive it. - Soon — Yaa Gyasi

The convicts working the mines were almost all like him. Black, once slave, once free, now slave again. — Yaa Gyasi

Sonny would tell Marcus about how America used to lock up black men off the sidewalks for labor or how redlining kept banks from investing in black neighborhoods, preventing mortgages or business loans. So was it a wonder that prisons were still full of them? Was it a wonder that the ghetto was the ghetto? — Yaa Gyasi

Then next time bring more water, but don't cry for this time. There should be no room in your life for regret. If in the moment of doing you felt clarity, you felt certainty, then why feel regret later? — Yaa Gyasi

You can learn anything when you have to learn it. You could learn how to fly if it meant you would live another day. — Yaa Gyasi

Used to sell 'em; now they just send 'em to prison like — Yaa Gyasi

Hell was a place of remembering, each beautiful moment passed through the mind's eye until it fell to the ground like a rotten mango, perfectly useless, uselessly perfect — Yaa Gyasi

Split the Castle open,
find me, find you.
We, two, felt sand,
wind, air.
One felt whip. Whipped,
Once shipped.
We, two, black.
Me, you.
One grew from
cocoa's soil, birthed from nut,
skin uncut, still bleeding.
We two, wade.
The waters seem different
but are same.
Our same. Sister skin.
Who knew? Not me. Not you — Yaa Gyasi

You keep doin' what you doin' and the white man don't got to do it no more. He ain't got to sell you or put you in a coal mine to own you. He'll own you just as is, and he'll say you the one who did it. He'll say it's your fault. — Yaa Gyasi

Evil begets evil. It grows. It transmutes, so that sometimes you cannot see that the evil in the world began as the evil in your own home. I — Yaa Gyasi

They would just trade one type of shackles for another, trade physical ones that wrapped around wrists and ankles for the invisible ones that wrapped around the mind. — Yaa Gyasi

Everything made him want to cry. He could see the differences between them as long ravines, impossible to cross. He was old; she was young. He was educated; she was not. He was scarred; she was whole. Each difference split the ravine wider and wider still. There was no way. And — Yaa Gyasi

We are all weak most of the time,' she said finally. 'Look at the baby. Born to his mother, he learns how to eat from her, how to walk, talk, hunt, run. He does not invent new ways. He just continues with the old. This is how we all come to the world, James. Weak and needy, desperate to learn how to be a person.' She smiled at him. 'But if we do not like the person we have learned to be, should we just sit in front of our fufu, doing nothing? I think, James, that maybe it is possible to make a new way. — Yaa Gyasi

If we go to the white man for school ,we will learn the way the white man wants us to learn. We will come back and build the country the white man wants us to build. One that continues to serve them. We will never be free. — Yaa Gyasi

Once the woman decided to get free, she had also decided to stay free... The older Jo =got, the more he understood about the woman he called Ma. The more he understood that sometimes staying free required unimaginable sacrifice. — Yaa Gyasi

You was always so angry. Even as a child, you was angry. I — Yaa Gyasi

It wasn't like he hadn't asked himself the same thing a hundred times or more. How many times could he pick himself up off the dirty floor of a jail cell? How many hours could he spend marching? How many bruises could he collect from the police? How many letters to the mayor, governor, president could he send? How many more days would it take to get something to change? And when it changed, would it change? Would America be any different, or would it be mostly the same? For — Yaa Gyasi

She was missing all but her four front teeth, evenly spaced, as though they had chased all of the other teeth out of her mouth and then joined together in the middle, triumphant. — Yaa Gyasi

Evil is like a shadow. It follows you. — Yaa Gyasi

We believe the one who has the power. He is the one who gets to write the story. So when you study history, you must always ask yourself, Whose story am I missing? Whose voice was suppressed so that this voice could come forth? — Yaa Gyasi

heat radiating off of his skin, coming — Yaa Gyasi

she soon found herself shouting in Twi, "I'm from Ghana, stupid. Can't you see?" The boy didn't stop his English. "But you come from America?" Angry, she kept walking. Her backpack straps were heavy against her shoulders, and she knew they would leave marks. — Yaa Gyasi

There should be no room in your life for regret. If in the moment of doing you felt clarity, you felt certainty, then why feel regret later?" She — Yaa Gyasi

You want to know what weakness is? Weakness is treating someone as though they belong to you. Strength is knowing that everyone belongs to themselves. — Yaa Gyasi

She walked to where he stood, where the fire met the water. He took her hand and they both looked out into the abyss of it. The fear that Marcus had felt inside the Castle was still there, but he knew it was like the fire, a wild thing that could still be controlled, contained. — Yaa Gyasi

in America the worst thing you could be was a black man. Worse than dead, you were a dead man walking. — Yaa Gyasi

Loneliness, maybe. Or aloneness. The way I don't fit here or there. My — Yaa Gyasi

He said that people need time in order to be able to see things clearly. — Yaa Gyasi

We believe the one who has power. He is the one who gets to write the story. So when you study history you must ask yourself, Whose story am I missing?, Whose voice was suppressed so that this voice could come forth? Once you have figured that out, you must find that story too. From there you get a clearer, yet still imperfect, picture. — Yaa Gyasi

The need to call this thing "good" and this thing "bad," this thing "white" and this thing "black," was an impulse that Effia did not understand. In her village, everything was everything. Everything bore the weight of everything else. — Yaa Gyasi

She continued. "I love my people, James," she said, and his name on her tongue was indescribably sweet. "I am proud to be Asante, as I am sure you are proud to be Fante, but after I lost my brothers, I decided that as for me, Akosua, I will be my own nation. — Yaa Gyasi

This is the problem of history. We cannot know that which we were not there to see and hear and experience for ourselves. We must rely upon the words of others. Those who were there in the olden days, they told stories to the children so that the children would know, so that the children could tell stories to their children. And so on, and so on. — Yaa Gyasi

I haven't changed, Willie," Robert said to the wall. "No, but you ain't the same neither," she replied. — Yaa Gyasi

Whenever her father or grandmother asked her about pain, Marjorie would say she had never known it. As a young child, someone had told her that the scars her father wore on his face and her grandmother on her hands and feet were born of great pain. And because Marjorie had no scars that resembled those, she could never bring herself to complain of pain. Once, — Yaa Gyasi

What could be worse than dead? But all around him, the evidence was clear. Only weeks before, the NYPD had shot down a fifteen-year-old black boy, a student, for next to nothing. The shooting had started the riots, pitting young black men and some black women against the police force. The news made it sound like the fault lay with the blacks of Harlem. The violent, the crazy, the monstrous black people who had the gall to demand that their children not be gunned down in the streets. — Yaa Gyasi

... as a reminder that a white man could still kill him for nothing. — Yaa Gyasi

He didn't miss what he didn't know, what he couldn't feel in his hands or his heart. — Yaa Gyasi

What I know now, my son: Evil begets evil. It grows. It transmutes, so that sometimes you cannot see that the evil in the world began as the evil in your own home. I'm sorry you have suffered. I'm sorry for the way your suffering casts a shadow over your life, over the woman you have yet to marry, the children you have yet to have. — Yaa Gyasi

Everything was brilliant here, even the ground. Everywhere — Yaa Gyasi

Other children would be sent to England for school and they would come back to form an elite class." Next to him, Marjorie shifted her weight, and Marcus tried not to look at her. It was the way most people lived their lives, on upper levels, not stopping to peer underneath. — Yaa Gyasi

what he wanted to capture with his project was the feeling of time, of having been a part of something that stretched so far back, was so impossibly large, that it was easy to forget that she, and he, and everyone else, existed in it - not apart from it, but inside of it. — Yaa Gyasi

A lioness. She mates with her lion and he thinks the moment is about him when it is really about her, her children, her posterity. Her tricki s to make him think that he is king of the bush, but what he does a king matter? Really, she is king and queen and everything in between. — Yaa Gyasi

Tiny pieces of clay that they would never find, that would be absorbed into that earth from which they came. The — Yaa Gyasi

It was the way most people lived their lives, on upper levels, not stopping to peer underneath. And — Yaa Gyasi

Her mother often joked that Marjorie must have been birthed from a cocoa nut, split open and wide. — Yaa Gyasi

How could he explain to Marjorie that what he wanted to capture with his project was the feeling of time, of having been a part something that stretched so far back, was so impossibly large, that it was easy to forget that she, and he, and everyone else, existed in it - not apart from it, but inside it. — Yaa Gyasi

You know why I'm scared of the ocean?" She shook her head. "It's not just because I'm scared of drowning. Though I guess I am. It's because of all that space. It's because everywhere I look, I see blue, and I have no idea where it begins. When I'm out there, I stay as close as I can to the sand, because at least then I know where it ends." She didn't speak for a while, just continued walking a little bit ahead of him. Maybe she was thinking about fire, the thing she had told him she most feared. Marcus had never seen so much as a picture of her father, but he imagined that he had been a fearsome man with a scar covering one whole side of his face. He imagined that Marjorie feared fire for the same reasons he feared water. — Yaa Gyasi

My grandmother used to say we were born of a great fire. I wish I knew what she meant by that. — Yaa Gyasi

They'd heard it all, but hadn't they earned their freedom? The days of running through forests and living under floorboards. Wasn't that the price they had paid? — Yaa Gyasi

The white man's god is just like the white man. He thinks he is the only god, just like the white man thinks he is the only man. But the only reason he is god instead of Nyame or Chukwu or whoever is because we let him be. We do not fight him. We do not even question him. The white man told us he was the way, and we said yes, but when has the white man ever told us something was good for us and tat thing was really good? — Yaa Gyasi

When he was young, his father told him that black people didn't like water because they were brought over on slave ships. What did a black man want to swim for? The ocean floor was already littered with black men. — Yaa Gyasi

You cannot stick a knife in a goat and then say, "now I will remove my knife slowly - so let things be easy and clean; let there be no mess." There will always be blood. — Yaa Gyasi

but the older he got, the better he understood; forgiveness was an act done after the fact - a piece of the bad deeds future - and if you point the people's eyes to the future they might not see what is being done to hurt them in the present. — Yaa Gyasi

But Jo wasn't angry. Not anymore. He couldn't really tell if what he had been before was angry. It was an emotion he had no use for, that accomplished nothing and meant even less than that. If anything, what Jo really felt was tired. — Yaa Gyasi

Don't matter if you was or wasn't. All they gotta so is say you was. That's all they gotta do. You think cuz you all big and muscled up, you safe? Naw, dem white folks can't stand the sight of you. Walkin' round free as can be. Don't nobody want to see a black man look like you walkin' proud as a peacock. Like you ain't got a lick of fear in you — Yaa Gyasi

until it reached an Asante village. There, it disappeared, becoming one with the night. Effia's father, Cobbe Otcher, left his first wife, Baaba, with the new baby so that he might survey the damage to his yams, that most precious crop known far and wide to sustain families. Cobbe had lost seven yams, and he felt each loss — Yaa Gyasi

As long as he lived, it would always be a pleasure and a gift to fill his hands with the weight of her flesh. — Yaa Gyasi

The practice of segregation still meant that Sonny had to see white people sitting at the front of every bus he took, that he got called "boy" by every other snot-nosed white kid in sight. The practice of segregation meant that he had to feel his separateness as inequality, and that was what he could not take. — Yaa Gyasi