A Quote by Maya Angelou

If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat. It is an unnecessary insult.

Maya Angelou

Quote Topics

Aware Being Black Black Girl Displacement Girl Growing Growing Up Her Insult Painful Razor Rust Southern Throat Unnecessary Up

Quote Author

Maya Angelou
American - Poet
April 4, 1928 - May 28, 2014

I read this book when I was young. It's about a black girl growing up in Heaven, Ohio. The cover has a black girl with clouds behind her. It was the first book cover I ever saw with a girl that looked like me.

Jamila Woods

I don't think it's different to be a black girl in England than it is to be a black girl from America. We all collectively share in a pain of displacement and not feeling like we quite belong in places.

Cynthia Erivo

... Janis Joplin has one of the most distinguished female voices of the decade. It is a voice that has been aged in Southern Comfort and cured with Kahlua and milk. It is a voice that cuts you like a razor, but you can still hear the innocence in it, a claim to purity that soars out of the garbage of her throat, carrying evil harmonies.

Al Aronowitz

Once at a record store in San Francisco, over a thousand kids showed up. They pushed forward and broke a window. A big piece of glass fell on top of this girl. And the girl's throat was slit. She just got slit. And I remember there was blood everywhere. Oh God, so much blood. And she grabbed her throat and was bleeding and everyone just ignored her. Why? Because I was there and they wanted to grab at me and get my autograph. I wonder whatever happened to that girl.

Michael Jackson

I like health-conscious cooking, but growing up in the South, I do love southern cooking; southern France, southern Italy, southern Spain. I love southern cooking.

Clarence Clemons

Growing up, I saw Mum as being so celebratory of our culture. So I was surprised to hear - during discussions sparked by the Black Lives Matter protests - about the racism she experienced growing up, and the shame she once felt about being black.

Miquita Oliver

Growing up black in America, and with Southern roots in my family, I was informed in my own life.

Rob Morgan

I became a novelist because of 'Gone With the Wind,' or more precisely, my mother raised me up to be a 'Southern' novelist, with a strong emphasis on the word 'Southern' because 'Gone With the Wind' set my mother's imagination ablaze when she was a young girl growing up in Atlanta.

Pat Conroy

What? she said once to herself, and then once aloud, What? She felt a total displacement, like a spinning globe brought to a sudden halt by the light touch of a finger. How did she end up here, like this? How could there have been so much - so many moments, so many people and things, so many razors and pillows, timepieces and subtle coffins - without her being aware? How did her life live itself without her?

Jonathan Safran Foer

I didn't have the easiest childhood. I was never the popular girl in school growing up. I was always the lone black girl or the lone fat girl or the long tall girl, so that has made me more compassionate to all people. It also gave me the drive and ambition to go after my dreams in a big way.

Wendy Williams

It was the world of Southern, rural, black growing up, of folks sitting on porches day and night, of folks calling your mama, 'cause you walked by and didn't speak, and of the switch waiting when you got home so that you could be taught some manners. It was a world of single black older women schoolteachers, dedicated, tough; they had taught your mama, her sisters, and her friends. They knew your people in ways that you never would and shared their insight, keeping us in touch with generations. It was a world where we had a history.

bell hooks

For a black person who's Senegalese, growing up in France, or a New York Jamaican, that's a completely different relationship with being black and how you might be accepted in that culture or that world. Everyone's experience is different. Especially black women and black men.

Santan Dave

The real me is a southern girl with her Levis on and an open heart. Wish I could save the world, like I was super girl.

Jessica Simpson

I was brought up in black neighborhoods in South Baltimore. And we really felt like we were very black. We acted black and we spoke black. When I was a kid growing up, where I came from, it was hip to be black. To be white was kind of square.

Jerry Leiber

Growing up in the suburbs, the worst part was definitely being black. The best part was maybe also being black. Just having that perspective, being on the outside while also being on the inside. That's kind of how I've felt my whole life.