After reading Bambara, I wondered for the first time how great an American sentence, paragraph, or book could be if it wasn't, at least partially, written to and for black Americans in the Deep South.

Mama's antidote to being born a black boy on parole in Central Mississippi is not for us to seek freedom, but to insist on excellence at all times. Mama takes it personal when she realizes that I realize she is wrong. There ain't no antidote to life, I tell her. How free can you be if you really accept that white folks are the traffic cops of your life? Mama tells me that she is not talking about freedom. She says that she is talking about survival.

Y'all taught me that unacknowledged scars accumulated in battles won often hurt more than battles lost.

We are real black characters with real character, not the stars of American racist spectacle. Blackness is not probable cause.

Obama will win. We will win. Then we will continue to lose. And the right questions will never be honestly asked or answered, and it's all just too much.

Black is not a vice. Nor is segregation a virtue.