We feared [Ryland's Hounds] and hated them, perhaps more than we feared and hated the Quality who held us, for all of us were low, we were all Tasked… - Ta-Nehisi Coates

In , Dad found a literature of himself. He'd read and , but from Wright he learned that there was an entire shadow canon, a tradition of writers who grabbed the pen, not out of leisure but to break the chain.

Resent the people trying to entrap your body and it can be destroyed. ... The destroyers will rarely be held accountable. Mostly they will receive pensions. And destruction is merely the superlative form of a dominion whose prerogatives include friskings, detainings, beatings, and humiliations. All of this is common to black people. And all of this is old for black people. No one is held responsible.

Any claim to ourselves, to the hands that secured us, the spine that braced us, and the head that directed us, was contestable.