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It occurred to me that death, its frequency, causes, sequence and application to written history, favours, even anticipates, certain latitudes. The number of mourners, their enthusiasms, their entertainments, their widows' weeds, all mapped by a cartographer well schooled in pre-Galileo geography. I'm waxing. Don't stop me. I couldn't tell you the things I know.

— Sans Souci by Dionne Brand (Page 143)

I am not a cynical woman under ordinary circumstances, but if you sit here long enough, anyone can see how what appears to be ordinary, isn't.

— Sans Souci by Dionne Brand (Page 132)

Did anyone's play or poem topple a dictatorship? No, but they provided the space to evoke feelings and moods other than fear, anxiety, and hopelessness. Memorizing and reciting lines from beautiful poetry and great works of theatre offered relief, however momentary, to feel less alone in their understanding of injustice and what is possible in the face of it. The quiet performances of these literary works in basements, the backs of churches, and other clandestine spaces cultivated communities of people who reminded one another of the power of the collective. It's that awareness that comes with choosing joy.

— The Black Joy Project by Kleaver Cruz (Page 28)

The importance of imagination in the role of Black liberation still rings true today. It is the only way, in fact, that we can begin to create a world that does not yet exist—a world that loves and cherishes Black people as much as it loves Black culture(s).

— The Black Joy Project by Kleaver Cruz (Page 14)

For centuries, Blackness has been too equated with agony and grief. Persistent and determined fights for racial equity have challenged and made shifts to this old narrative, but the world around us continues to reinforce the worst. It continues to portray Black people as criminal, dangerous, unbeautiful, unworthy, disadvantaged, and good only for what pleasures or labor our bodies can provide. But we know better. We know about bursts of laughter over home-cooked sancocho with family and arguments over the best jollof rice. We know about rousing, poignant protest music during marches for justice on behalf of all Black people. We know about cornrows, twist-outs, box braids, high-top fades, the right 'fits, Telfar bags, and dope kicks— hard-bottoms, sneakers, and everything in between-that influence culture around the world. We know about dances that go viral on social media, choreographed by teenage Black girls and then copied around the globe. We know the affirmations our elders speak into us that fortify us each day.

— The Black Joy Project by Kleaver Cruz (Page 1)

She'd worked "illegal" for six years. Taking care of children, holding their hands across busy streets, standing with them at corners which were incongruous to her colour, she herself incongruous to the little hands, held as if they were more precious than she, made of gold, and she just the black earth around. She was always uncomfortable under the passing gazes, muttering to herself that she knew, they didn't have to tell her that she was out of place here. But there was no other place to be right now. The little money fed her sometimes, fed her children back home, no matter the stark scene which she created on the corners of the street. She, black, silent and unsmiling; the child, white, tugging and laughing, or whining.

— Sans Souci by Dionne Brand (Page 116 - 117)

We had debated what to call my mother over and over again and came to no conclusions. Some of the words sounded insincere and disloyal, since they really belonged to my grandmother, although we never called her by those names. But when we tried them out for my mother, they hung so cold in the throat that we were discouraged immediately. Calling my mother by her given name was too presumptuous, even though we had always called all our aunts and uncles by theirs. Unable to come to a decision, we abandoned each other to individual choices. In the end, after our vain attempts to form some word, we never called my mother by any name. If we needed to address her, we stood about until she noticed that we were there and then we spoke. Finally, we never called my mother.

— Sans Souci by Dionne Brand (Page 97)

To sleep beneath the raw stench of copra, night after night, for two hundred years is not easy; to hear tired breathing, breathless fucking, children screaming for five hundred years is not easy. And the big house was always empty, except for two months of the year. The slave barracks whose layers of gazette paper stretched for hundreds of years, was packed with Black humanity, rolling over and over and over without end, and still. This is where I was born. This is how I know struggle, know it like a landscaper. An artist could not have drawn it better.

— Sans Souci by Dionne Brand (Page 67)

The jeep eases along for another fifty yards; my eyes rest on the place, old and familiar like watching the past, feeling comfortable and awestruck at once. Then, too, resentful and sad. A boy atop the left barracks stops raking the copra to watch us. No one else is about. The air is very still, yet breathing, a breeze, quiet and fresh, blowing from the sea. The sea here, too, is still. A country beach, a beach for scavenging children, thinking women, fishermen. The sea is not rough or fantastic, nothing more stupendous than an ordinary beauty, ever rolling, ever present. The kind of sea to raise your eyes to from labour. This must have been the look toward the sea that slaves saw as they pulled oxen, cut and shelled coconut, dug provisions from the black soil on the north side of the road. This must have been a look of envy.

— Sans Souci by Dionne Brand (Page 61)

Remember again, the systems live within us. The punishment mindset is very hard to get out of. And it's normal and healthy often to want vengeance against people for causing you great harm. That's not going to get addressed in an accountability process. If you are the one who is rushing after that, and that's really what you're seeking, an accountability process really would not help. You're always going to be feeling as though it's "not working" because it's not doing the thing that you really would like. And I really want to make people understand that. Not everything should be in an accountability process. Not everything can be resolved in an accountability process. Accountability processes often feel terrible to the people while they're in it. It's not a healing process. It might put you on the road toward your own personal healing.

— We Do This 'Til We Free Us by Mariame Kaba, Tamara K. Nopper, Naomi Murakawa (Page 141)