Quotes About Empowerment

Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender" -Alice Walker

All he think about since us married is how to make me mind. He don't want a wife, he want a dog. (Walker 2000: 58)

All my life I had to fight... But I never thought I'd have to fight in my own house... I loves Harpo, she say. God knows I do. But I'll kill him dead before I let him beat me.

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any

Don't let them run over you, Nettie say. You got to let them know who got the upper hand.

You got to fight them, Celie,' she say. 'I can't do it for you. You got to fight them for yourself.

White folks is a miracle of affliction, say Sofia.

If he [God] ever listened to poor colored women the world would be a different place, I can tell you.

I'm getting tired of Harpo, she say. All he think about since us married is how to make me mind. He don't want a wife, he want a dog.

The little I knew about my own self wouldn't have filled a thimble!... But one thing I do thank her for, for teaching me to learn for myself, by reading and studying and writing a clear hand. And for keeping alive in me somehow the desire to know.

A girl is nothing to herself; only to her husband can she become something.

All my life I had to fight. I had to fight my daddy. I had to fight my brothers. I had to fight my cousins and my uncles. A girl child ain't safe in a family of men.

I lie back on the bed and haul up my dress. Yank down my bloomers. Stick the looking glass tween my legs. Ugh. All that hair. Then my pussy lips be black. Then inside look like a wet rose. It a lot prettier than you thought, ain't it? she say from the door.

The Olinka do not believe girls should be educated. When I asked a mother why she thought this, she said: A girl is nothing to herself; only to her husband can she become something.

THEY CANNOT KILL US, BECAUSE WITHOUT US THEY DIE.

RESISTANCE IS THE SECRET OF JOY! it says in huge block letters.

The defeat that had frightened her in the faces of black men was the defeat of black forever defined by white.

She bound to live her life and be herself no matter what.

Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.

Los olinkas no creen que se deba educar a las niñas. Cuando pregunté a una madre por qué pensaba así, me dijo: Una mujer no es nada por sí misma. Solo por su marido puede ser algo. ¿Y qué puede ser?, le pregunté. La madre de sus hijos. Pues yo no soy madre de los hijos de nadie, y sin embargo soy alguien.

Who can even imagine me looking a strange white man in the eye? It seems to me I have talked to them always with one foot raised in flight, with my head turned in whichever way is farthest from them.

You a lowdown dog is what's wrong, I say. It's time to leave you and enter into the Creation. And your dead body just the welcome mat I need.

her first published book, Once (1965).

But I am not the mother of anybody's children, I said, and I am something