What happened after World War I was disgraceful. Most veterans, like my great-uncle, were squashed back into place. Congress couldn't pass an anti-lynching bill. The World War II generation, though, wasn't going to take it. Darryl Pinckney More Quotes by Darryl Pinckney More Quotes From Darryl Pinckney I can see criticizing, complaining, protesting - anything but choosing not to vote. Too many people died for us not to vote. Darryl Pinckney vote complaining people It's not true that voting doesn't make a difference. To check out is political suicide. This is especially true for our young black artists. You don't want to inadvertently end up doing someone's bidding. Darryl Pinckney differences artist suicide Marriage equality is a very middle-class issue and voting rights is a very working-class issue. If you do not vote, who are you speaking for? Who will be the next Fannie Lou Hamer? If not you or someone you know, then who? Darryl Pinckney issues rights class It's not nothing when you're abroad and you don't have a washing machine. Darryl Pinckney washing-machines washing machines You can get away with anything as long as it works. Darryl Pinckney get-away long The point of Berlin was that it seemed that only people like you ran the city. You never ran into people who weren't like you - especially when you lived as that kind of American in Berlin connected to the arts. Darryl Pinckney cities people art Europe was a very contentious subject in literature and yet jazz musicians still depended on Europe. Now it's not such a big deal. Darryl Pinckney musician literature europe Freedom is having real choice. This offers a limited amount of choices. This is participating in a very imperfect system that we're desperately hanging onto, that we don't want to see further eroded. Darryl Pinckney choices real want When you're writing fiction it's a heightened voice. You're trying to cast a spell, which isn't the same thing as trying to cast someone into it. You are creating a reality but it's a different sort of performance. Darryl Pinckney voice writing reality Criticism shouldn't be a performance that upstages the work it's talking about. Darryl Pinckney working-it criticism talking The city - as the theater of experience, the refuge, the hiding place - has, in turn, been replaced by an abstraction, the fast lane. In the fast lane, the passive observer reduces everything - streets, people, rock lyrics, headlines - to landscape. Every night holds magical promises of renewal. But burnout is inevitable, like some law of physics. Darryl Pinckney city experience night people History is a sly boots, and for a generation of blacks that cannot identify with the frustrations of Jim Crow, and for whites who cannot understand the hard deal that faces working-class blacks, it is difficult to reconcile Hughes's reputation as a poet-hero with his topical verse and uncomplicated prose. Darryl Pinckney generation understand hard history Slave narratives had their greatest influence on public opinion and on literature in the U.S. between 1830 and 1860. After Reconstruction's defeat, their urgency of tone was replaced by the softer one of reminiscence. Darryl Pinckney defeat influence opinion literature The nameless loser in Jay McInerney's 'Bright Lights, Big City' is going to the dogs like a gentleman. He is too smart to blame anyone for the impasse he has come to, hip enough to know he does not know enough, too sophisticated to masquerade as an anti-hero. Darryl Pinckney city lights smart gentleman I'd waste a holiday trying to set a story in this new place I'd visit, whereas I would never write a story about Indianapolis. Darryl Pinckney new place never holiday The history of blacks is complicated, fragmented, disturbing to contemplate - not a neat trail of challenges met or of felled trees blocking the path to the mountain top. Darryl Pinckney mountain path challenges history When writing on black life, whites have often been unwelcome, usually called upon to give witness or hauled in as the accused. Darryl Pinckney give black writing life In the years after World War I, blacks began to migrate to the North and its imagined freedoms in great numbers - 'Russian' came to mean a black who had rushed from the South. Darryl Pinckney great black war world Jean Toomer is a phantom of the Harlem Renaissance. Pick up any general study of the literature written by Afro-Americans, and there is the name of Jean Toomer. In biographies and memoirs of Harlem Renaissance figures, his name is invoked as if he had been one of the sights along Lenox Avenue. Darryl Pinckney name renaissance study literature 'High Cotton' is more conscious of class than 'Black Deutschland.' Darryl Pinckney high more black class
