simplyann

{Title}
word to your ma.
Mar 7 '10
“It is about the discovery of self in and through another. It implies that even the dark and terrible banality of racism can recede to a vanishing point when you understand, and are understood by, another human being. Goddammit if it doesn’t claim that love sets you free. These days “self-actualization” is the aim, and if you can’t do it alone you are admitting a weakness. The potential rapture of human relationships to which Hurston gives unabashed expression, the profound “self-crushing love” that Janie feels for Tea Cake, may, I suppose, look like the dull finale of a “long, whiny, trawling search for a man.” For Tea Cake and Janie, though, the choice of each other is not experienced as desperation, but as discovery, and the need felt on both sides causes them joy, not shame…. It is odd to diagnose weakness where lovers themselves do not feel it.”
—

Zadie Smith
Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays
(via ronmarks) (via tobia)

I’ve read this essay nearly a dozen times. I love it.

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