I have found that the platonic affection in friendships and familial love for children can be relied upon with certainty to lift the bruised soul and… - Maya Angelou

Don't do anything that you think is wrong. Just do what you think is right, and then be ready to back it up even with your life.

she must provide a blanket of stability, which warms but does not suffocate, and she must tell her children the truth about the power of white power without suggesting that it cannot be challenged.

Just as I prepared to stand and bow, a woman appeared with a miniature coffee cup in her hand.
She offered it to me.
As I took it, I noticed two things:
Bugs crawling on the ground and the men approving of me by snapping their fingers.
I bowed and took a sip of the coffee and almost fainted.
I had a cockroach on my tongue.
I looked at the peoples' faces and I could not spit it out.
My grandmother would have pushed away the grave's dirt and traveled by willpower to show me her face of abject disappointment.
I could not bear that.
I opened my throat and drank the cup dry.
I counted four cockroaches.