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Margo Jefferson Quotes


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Quotes by Margo Jefferson

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I found literary idols in Adrienne Kennedy, Nella Larsen, and Ntozake Shange, writers who'd dared to locate a sanctioned, forbidden space between white vulnerability and black invincibility.

~Margo Jefferson

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A Negro girl could never be purely innocent. The vengeful Race Fairy always lurked nearby; your parents' best hope was that the fairy would show up at someone else's feast and punish their child. Parents had to protect themselves, too, and protect you from knowing how much danger you all were in.

~Margo Jefferson

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I was taught you don't tell your secrets to strangers - certainly not secrets that expose error, weakness, failure. My generation, like its predecessors, was taught that since our achievements received little notice or credit from white America, we were not to discuss our faults, lapses, or uncertainties in public.

~Margo Jefferson

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My individual way of taking on the burdens of history has changed. I don't think of them only as burdens; I think they are honorable.

~Margo Jefferson

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Yes, for blacks, racism functions without the actual presence of whites, just as for whites it functions without the actual presence of blacks! Beliefs, conventions, history do the work.

~Margo Jefferson

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I think the most harmful belief passed on to me - not always directly - was the belief that whatever I did as a Negro, however much we Negroes achieved, despite the presence of some enlightened whites, white society as a whole enjoyed being racists in the secret core of their being and would never, ever give that up.

~Margo Jefferson

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So much of what blacks and women contend with is centered in how we view, and how the world views, our bodies. Gestures, voices, affect.

~Margo Jefferson

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Depression is so treacherous - it can be so alluring as well as punishing. After all, it's yours and yours alone - no one else can interfere with it.

~Margo Jefferson

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Criticism does demand a certain kind of authority, but what about the authority of not really being sure what you think? What about the authority, the authenticity that comes from bringing all your intellectual, emotional and spiritual equipment to a piece of art or entertainment whilst still being uncertain and confused?

~Margo Jefferson

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There isn't only one way that black art or entertainment is represented, and that's the most important thing. We're permeating every style. We're claiming and, when necessary, appropriating all kinds of forms. Nothing is forbidden, because it's not what black people do: because it's not what we think of as black art.

~Margo Jefferson

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Biography

Nationality: American

Type: Critic

Born: October 17th, 1947

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