Zora-Toni-Maya

“I had always hated frying my hair—burnt ears, a smokey straightening, and the stink of your own hair burning. How many nights had i spent trying to sleep on curlers, bound with scarves that cut into my head like a tourniquet? Afraid to go to the beach, afraid to walk in the rain, afraid to make passionate love on hot summer nights if i had to get up and go to work in the morning. Afraid my hair would ‘go back.’ Back to where? Back to the devil or Africa. The permanent was even worse: trying to sit calmly while lye was eating its way into my brain. Clumps of hair falling out. The hair on your head feeling like someone else’s…People are right when they say it’s not what you have on your head but what you have in it. You can be a revolutionary-thinking person and have your hair fried up. And you can have an Afro and be a traitor to Black people. But for me, how you dress and how you look have always reflected what you have to say about yourself. When you go through all your life processing and abusing your hair so it will look like the hair of another race of people, then you are making a statement and the statement is clear.
It was a matter of simple statement for me. This is who i am and this is how i like to look. This is what i think is beautiful. You can spend a lifetime discovering African-style hairdresses, there are so many of them, and so many creative, natural styles yet to be invented. For me, it was important not just because of how good it made me feel but because of the world in which i lived. In a country that is trying to completely negate the image of Black people, that constantly tells us we are nothing, our culture is nothing, i felt and still feel that we have got to constantly make positive statements about ourselves. Our desire to be free has got to manifest itself in everything we are and do…Maybe in another time, when everybody is equal and free, it won’t matter how anybody wears their hair or dresses or looks. Then there won’t be any oppressors to mimic or avoid mimicking.”

source:
Shakur, Assata. “Assata: An Autobiography.” p.175

“

CULTURE

i must confess that waltzes
do not move me
i have no sympathy for symphonies.

i guess i hummed the Blues
too early,
and spent too many midnights
out wailing to the rain.

source:
Shakur, Assata. Assata: An Autobiography. p. 159

“As far as i’m concerned, if a Black man and woman make a marriage work in amerika, they’ve accomplished a miracle. Because everything is against them. Just being poor is one of their biggest obstacles. Most of the arguments are about money. It’s hard as hell to be loving and caring when you can’t pay the bills and you don’t know where the next dollar is coming from. And the way that we’re brought up to think adds insult to injury. It’s changing a little bit now, but when i was growing up, every white man on television was able to support his family with no particular strain. There was no need for his wife to work. Her job was to stay home and take care of the kids. Black people accepted those role models for themselves even though they had very little to do with the reality of their own existence and survival.”

source:
Shakur, Assata. Assata: An Autobiography. p. 74

“I will never let a man hand me an Invitation to Crazy.”

source:
pg 114, 32 Candles by Ernessa T. Carter