A Quote by Geraldine Brooks
The day in 2004 when the radiologist told me I had invasive cancer, I walked down the hospital corridor looking for a phone to call my husband, and I could almost see the fear coming toward me like a big, black shadow.
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Adults who loved and knew me, on many occasions sat me down and told me that I was black. As you could imagine, this had a profound impact on me and soon became my truth. Every friend I had was black; my girlfriends were black. I was seen as black, treated as black, and endured constant overt racism as a young black teenager.
I didn't believe when I was first told that I have cancer. I thought, 'How can a young person like me get cancer?' I thought it could never happen to me. It took me a while to realise that I was diagnosed with cancer.
The battle against cancer has made me strong. It's like winning a war! When I was diagnosed, I was told by doctors my kidney, liver and other organs could fail. It was tough. I didn't know if I could save my life. But I was positive, and because of that, the doctor told me that I would be a man who would never have cancer.
When I was 14, my dad came home one day and told us he had cancer. It was looking pretty bad. And I remember him saying how afraid he was that he hadn't gotten to do the things he wanted to do during his life. He had surgery and survived. And he's still alive today, thank God. But it made a big impact on me.
Then your fingers moved down to my chin. You pushed it up with your thumb to look at me, almost like you were studying me in the artificial lights above my head. And, I mean, you really looked at me … with eyes like two stars. [...] And I had wings fluttering away inside me all right. Big fat moth wings. You trapped me easily, drew me toward you like I was already in the net.
The next day, I got a phone call from him and he told me to come and read for a movie called New Jack City. So I went over there and they told me I was gonna wear dreads and play a cop.
I didn't feel the tusk go through me. But I did feel this sort of freight elevator coming down, popping the chicken bones, you know. It blinded me. Everything was black. It was bright noon day sun. You mustn't get walked on by elephants.
There were silences in my head. I could abandon myself completely to the pleasure of multiple relationships, to the beauty of the day, to the joys of the day. It was as if a cancer in me had ceased gnawing me. The cancer of introspection.
Miss Celia stares down into the pot like she's looking for her future. "Are you happy, Minny?" "Why you ask me funny questions like that?" "But are you?" "Course I's happy. You happy too. Big house, big yard, husband looking after you." I frown at Miss Celia and I make sure she can see it. Because ain't that white people for you, wondering if they are happy ENOUGH.
My husband once said he'd never met anybody who walked so fast and ran so slowly. As I said, it's a little hard for me to try new things, and this was me facing a fear that I'd had my whole life. Since I had no experience running, I felt like a failure before I'd even begun.
On my second space walk, I was riding the Canadarm, heading down toward the payload bay of the space shuttle, and I could see the space shuttle highlighted against the Earth in the background, and there was this black, infinite, hostile void of space. I remember looking down at the Earth and thinking, "Beneath me is a 4½-billion-year-old planet, upon which the entire history of the human species has taken place." That was an incredibly humbling moment, and I had a bit of an epiphany.
The Lord givith and the Lord takith away. I was given a lot of signs from the universe and looking at it in retrospect made me feel like God was telling me I needed to follow my dream. My granny getting in that car accident and being at that hospital when I was going there to see my girl... that whole part of the story where I go to the show and come back to the hospital... and it was almost like as soon as I found out that my granny didn't make it as soon as I got back, I also found out that my son had just come out.
Out of the corner of one eye, I could see my mother. Out of the corner of the other eye, I could see her shadow on the wall, cast there by the lamplight. It was a big and solid shadow, and it looked so much like my mother that I became frightened. For I could not be sure whether for the rest of my life I would be able to tell when it was really my mother and when it was really her shadow standing between me and the rest of the world.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree~ And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more, But dipped its top and set me down again. That would be good both going and coming back. One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
My stomach was hurting, so I just told the doctor, let me get a MRI. I went and got an MRI and two hours later, they told me I had got cancer. I said something like, 'Hell no. I ain't got no cancer, y'all trippin'.'
Until the '90s, major labels were looking for a certain look. This Sony guy told me I was 'too black, too fat, too short, and too old.' Told me to go and bleach my skin. Told me to step in the background and just stay back. I had the voice, but I didn't have the looks.
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