ADULTHOOD IS A S#!%SHOW
“I could see books in front of me. I had read them secretly, but this time, in this fever dream, I was able to read without fear of being discovered. I had wondered every time I sneaked in there what white people would do to a slave who had learned how to read. What would they do to a slave who knew what a hypotenuse was, what irony meant, how retribution was spelled?”
Artist: Siphesihle Ntsungwana
“Nothing could have prepared me for what she said next. She said, ‘Miss Watson told Judge Thatcher that she was going to sell you to a man in New Orleans.’
‘What’s that mean?’ Lizzie asked. ‘Papa, what does that mean?’
I walked to the door and looked out.
‘Jim?’ Sadie said.
‘Papa?’
‘Did she say all of us or only me?’ I asked.
‘Just you Jim,’ she cried. ‘What are we going to do? They’re going to split us up and we won’t know where you are.’
They were going to rip my family apart and send me to New Orleans, where I would be even farther from freedom and would probably never see my family again.”
Photographer: Bre’Ann Whlgn
“Jim, I’m gonna ask you a question now. Have you been in Judge Thatcher’s library room?”
“In his what?”
“His library.”
“You mean dat room wit all dem books?”
“Yes”
“No, missums. I seen dem books, but I ain’t been in da room. Why fo you be askin’ me dat?”
“Oh, he found some book off the shelves.”
I laughed. “What I gone do wif a book?”
She laughed, too.”
Artist: Lekan Abatan