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Aurora Levins Morales
170 quotes
“It's the perversion of sexuality that frightens me. It's the way the women around me exude a sexiness that has nothing to do with the heart. Of course Latin Women love as well as any other women... but while the chilliest Anglo-Saxon repression of sex pretends it simply doesn't exist, Latin repression says it's a filthy fact of life, use it for what it's worth... shake it in his face, wear it as a decoy. It's all over the floor and it's cold and savage. It's the hatred of the powerless, turned crooked.”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) first seen 1981 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: ...And Even Fidel Can't Change That" in This Bridge Called My Back edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria E. Anzaldúa (1981)
“The relationship between mother and daughter stands in the center of what I fear most in our culture. Heal that wound and we change the world. A revolution capable of healing our wounds. If we're the ones who can imagine it, if we're the ones who dream about it, if we're the ones who need it most, then no one else can do it. We're the ones.”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Not one of those books that ignore us could have been written without our shopping, baking, mending, ironing, typing, making coffee, comforting. Without our caring for the children, minding the store, getting in the crop, making their businesses pay. This is our story, and the truth of our lives will overthrow them.”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) first seen 1997 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remedios: Stories of Earth and Iron from the History of Puertorriquenas (1997)
“Let's get one thing straight. Puerto Rico was parda, negra, mulata, mestiza. Not a country of Spaniards at all. We outnumbered them, year after year.”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) first seen 1997 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remedios: Stories of Earth and Iron from the History of Puertorriquenas (1997)
“sediment has no nationality. Sediment drifts from place to place, on currents of water and air, on muskrat fur and the feathers of Indigo Buntings. It travels without passports, visas, or allegiances.”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) first seen 2019 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Preface to Silt: Prose Poems (2019)
“We cannot be owned. We cannot own each other. And there is no such thing as a particle of US soil.”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) first seen 2019 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Preface to Silt: Prose Poems (2019)
“It was hopeful to have a socialist with really good policies go as far as he did in this rigged process. The ideas his campaign put forth helped us imagine a different outcome, a world in which sensible, humane policies that support people and planet were the law of the land. I imagine that world every day. Bernie Sanders’s campaign made that easier. It changed the conversation. In different ways, so did Elizabeth Warren’s. And then it was over. But it’s the campaigning that’s over, not the conversation, and certainly not the fight for a different story, which is what all organizing is about.”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) first seen 2020 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Midnight in the Latrines" (2020)
“The first rule I remember learning was never to harm or deface a book. The second was never to cross a picket line. (Introduction/Acknowledgements)”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She taught me to love the women: Jane Austen, Dorothy Sayers, Josephine Tey, Virginia Woolf, and later we would trade the titles of new books on the phone: Doris Lessing, Agnes Smedley, Charlotte Bronte's Shirley, June Jordan, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker. (Introduction/Acknowledgements)”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am new. History made me. My first language was spanglish. I was born at the crossroads and I am whole.”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I say solidarity is knowing the future is long and wide, with room for everyone on earth to enter. I say it's taking the long view of the job. (from "Letter To a Compañero")”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You were my first grief. From the death of you, so intimate, so much an unexplained event of the universe, I made my first decision to live. (beginning of "Heart Of My Heart, Bone Of My Bone")”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am shaking with rage that I cannot stop what is being done. That it is being done in the name of protecting Jews. That there are those who will believe that it is in my interest as a Jew, that by being a Jew I have agreed to these acts committed in my name. A logjam of emotions, and beneath, an icy river of fear.”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have learned that suffering does not improve people, that slavery does not ennoble us for freedom, that oppression springs from oppression, echoing the twisted lessons we learn from our pain.”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“we could be allies, the Arabs and we, two persecuted peoples rooted in the same land, the same customs, food, language. The task is the most difficult one, the most terrifying, the one requiring the most daring leap from the cliff of this present bloody moment.”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I know I have dreamt this dream: Jews and Arabs moving in unison, dispossessing the warriors, building new villages on the sites of the old, changing the face of the land, the shape of history, the look of the future.”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the work I do, repetition is a method, a rhythm of meaning that must be maintained, a beat to my message. ("Libation")”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This...is what I dream of. Multitudes of women, all kinds of women, arguing, disagreeing, fighting it out, lifting our thoughts up out of the fields and cities and prisons and homes, not to carry the sky but to fill it, making our own wind, strong enough to topple towers and pollinate a whole new world into bloom. ("My Feminism")”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How many know that the UN Commission on the Status of Women is the work of Latin American and Caribbean feminists, leaders in a Pan-American women's movement between the two world wars? It was these women, Minerva Bernardino from the Dominican Republic, Amalia Castillo de Ledon from Mexico, Isabel P. Vidal from Uruguay, and Bertha Lutz from Brazil, not white US feminists fighting overly narrowly conceived gender equality, who helped to establish the category of women as a global class whose human rights need defending. ("My Feminism")”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This is a moment that organizers strive for, when the systemic forces behind individual misery become clear, when people's dissatisfactions turn outward, away from self-blame, blame of other oppressed people, blame of "human nature," and toward the workings of an unjust society. ("The Power of Story")”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Listening to, analyzing, creating, and disseminating stories, and doing so with courage, keenness, skill, and cunning, with the clear purpose of changing human consciousness in the direction of choosing justice-this is what organizing is all about. ("The Power of Story")”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All organisms are inherently sovereign. All organisms resist harm and repair damage. This is our nature. And our nature is to tell stories about it. Because the story of what is broken becomes something whole. The story of what was forgotten becomes memory. The story of how we survived becomes communal medicine. The story of what we lost becomes new soil. The story of how we are the same as everyone and the story of how we are unique are a braided lifeline. ("The Truths Our Bodies Tell")”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If we can teach the history of racism in the United States as a history of the shifting needs of empire and class, as a history of both impositions and choices, alliances and betrayals, a history with roots far outside and long before the first colonial encounters, if we can hold the tension between disbelief in race and belief in what racism does to us, we will enable more and more young people to remake old and seemingly immutable decisions about where their interests lie and with whom. ("What Race Isn't: Teaching about Racism")”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Those who make up the rules of Good English try earnestly or contemptuously to edit us into conformity, convinced that when we talk a different talk it's because we are educationally or genetically impaired. ("On Not Writing English")”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All peoples under attack learn the languages of those who can do us harm. We are multilingual of necessity. Those of us who, by using that language successfully, gain access to a small piece of public ground must fight continually to push our authenticity into print, onto the airwaves, into the classroom, out from the podium. ("On Not Writing English")”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Deciding that we are in fact accountable frees us to act. ("Raícism: Rootedness as Spiritual and Political Practice")”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“European Americans in this country need to find out against whom their whiteness has been structured, both historically and in the present. ("Raícism: Rootedness as Spiritual and Political Practice")”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The intellectual traditions I come from create theory out of shared lives instead of sending away for it. My thinking grew directly out of listening to my own discomforts, finding out who shared them, who validated them, and in exchanging stories about common experiences, finding patterns, systems, explanations of how and why things happened. This is the central process of consciousness raising, of collective testimonio. ("Certified Organic Intellectual")”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) first seen 2001 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: essay also in Telling to Live: Latina Feminist Testimonios By Latina Feminist Group (2001)
“Unnecessarily specialized language is used to humiliate those who are not supposed to feel entitled. It sells the illusion that only those who can wield it can think. ("Certified Organic Intellectual")”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Boycotts and divestment are honorable tools of moral persuasion through financial choice. ("BDS and Me")”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What dishonors my relatives is the fact of checkpoints in their names, of mass arrests, collective punishment, home demolitions, the theft of territory and resources, to rid the land of Palestinian people, so it can be farmed and built on by Israeli Jewish settlers. I am one of many Jews who believe only justice will bring peace, and who face tremendous pressure and personal attacks for saying so. Today, my Jewish kin who believe repression is the price of survival are acting on old fears of standing alone against terrible threats. ("BDS and Me")”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Only when we fully and honestly examine our histories and the power dynamics we have inherited from them can we truly decide to throw our lot in with each other, not for the short term but for the widest possible vision of a liberated future. ("Puerto Ricans and Jews")”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Taking responsibility for our place in the social relations of power doesn't mean volunteering to go under. It means dedicating ourselves and our resources to unmaking the structures of inequality, jumping from the burning building of piracy into a net held by many hands. ("Class Privilege and Loss")”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The ecological crisis we find ourselves in is in fact a crisis of human relations, with each other and with the entire planet. It is a crisis created by a set of false assumptions about reality, the same assumptions that drive all systems of oppression. That greed and domination are the inherent driving forces of human existence and, therefore, that warfare, conquest, enslavement, exploitation, the looting of other people and of the entire ecosystem are natural and inevitable, and therefore must be okay.”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“it's essential that we understand this: every struggle is an ecological struggle.”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For human society to be sustainable on earth, it must become inclusive, must take into account the well-being of each one of us.”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In order to create ecologically viable societies and avoid our own extinction, we will have to build social movements that include all humans in our vision of environmentalism and our entire ecosystem in our vision of social justice.”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Profit is built on inequality, which is incompatible with sustainability.”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I believe that we have it in us to rise to this moment, to end the failed experiment of greed, restore the streams of our creative power, and establish a global culture of reciprocity and generosity as the beating heart of human life on earth.”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“...injustice is traumatic. It does real damage to our bodies, our relationships, our emotions and intellects. We're all trying our best, hampered by millennia of PTSD.”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My personal medicine bag and tool kit have been gathered over a lifetime of activism. Here are the main ingredients...Cultivate Hope...Practice Consciousness Raising...Build Solidarity...Collectivize My Struggles...Connect with My Ecosystem”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Of every proposal for any kind of social action I ask whether it will increase the sum of human solidarity, because solidarity is the antidote to oppression, which always seeks to dehumanize and divide us.”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I remember that history is wide and deep, that there are many other lives being lived around me, and that generations stretch backward and forward from my moment in time. How I live my life right now extends the impact of ancestors and enriches the soil my descendants will plant their own lives in. Thinking this way makes the difficulties of the moment shrink against that grand background.”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Each one of us is tipped low on some scales, higher on others; each one of us is arbitrarily robbed and rewarded, punished and privileged for attributes beyond our control. But the injustice of the robbery and punishment is far more obvious to us than the injustice of our unearned privileges and rewards.”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The foundational crime of this country is indigenous genocide.”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The structures of unequal power are many-layered and complex in the ways they function in the world. But at its root, oppression is really quite simple. It's about looting. The rest is made up of the rules and institutions, rituals and agreements, mythologies, rationales and overt bullying by means of which small groups of people keep a firm grasp on way more than their share of the world's resources.”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In a massive act of projection, they [slavers] often described the African people who did every stitch of their work for them as lazy; seriously believed that slaves needed European people to set them tasks and make them useful.”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Who could bear to hold privilege that meant the suffering and death of others if they had not been trained from early childhood to see these others as unreal and undeserving? Who would tolerate for even an hour the inhuman conditions imposed by the privileged if they had not been trained from early childhood to feel themselves not fully entitled to life?”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As in the case of the false memory movement, the privileged accuse the disempowered of oppressing them. Teaching the histories, cultures, and thought of the 99 percent violates the "freedom" of privileged white heterosexual men by forcing them to participate in a world in which their interests and perceptions are not the exclusive priority of everyone.”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The denial of our interrelatedness is killing this planet and too many of its people.”
Aurora Levins Morales (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source