4 Quotes by Cinelle Barnes

Books did not discriminate, at least not explicitly.

Maybe I am finally the enigma she can’t decode. Maybe I like to be a mystery. What child of trauma doesn’t?

Books, art, fashion, history—were these not the things I had been erased from once I was deemed unfit to be a protected member of a state? Don’t we call them the humanities because they are supposedly what make us human, or acceptably human? Was being learned or worldly or talented not the currency that often bought me eye contact and first-name basis with guests and classmates and teachers?

Acting as family historian, I know now, is really just telling myself the story I already knew. I wait not on anybody else's affirmation, just my own. And here, in expecting only my own validation, is where my freedom lies.