Suppressed Voices Quotes

It was kind of interesting: [People] didn't really want to talk about it too much. And then after the election, it's kind of like they've been unleashed.

Whatever is silenced will clamor to be heard, though silently.

Literary history and the present are dark with silences . . . I have had special need to learn all I could of this over the years, myself so nearly remaining mute and having to let writing die over and over again in me. These are not natural silences--what Keats called agonie ennuyeuse (the tedious agony)--that necessary time for renewal, lying fallow, gestation, in the natural cycle of creation. The silences I speak of here are unnatural: the unnatural thwarting of what struggles to come into being, but cannot.

So when I read this story, it unlocked a volcano of unanswered questions, because the questions had never been asked. It was an opportunity to come to terms with the lot of repressed history - and history of repression.

So much conspires to silence us - because our truths are inherently subversive.

The memory of oppressed people is one thing that cannot be taken away, and for such people, with such memories, revolt is always an inch below the surface.

We have an open society. No one will come and take me away for saying what I am saying. But they don't have to, if they can control how many people hear it. And that's how they do it.

Songs sung under duress are often very powerful.

Slaves were expected to sing as well as to work. A silent slave was not liked, either by masters or overseers.