#memo

Brighton Beach does not look, smell, or sound like Russia. It's a parody of Russia at best, something as different from the real thing as a picture of the Eiffel Tower. Yes, they sell Russian food on Brighton Beach, and Russian books and videos, and Russian clothes, and there are Russian restaurants and Russian nightclubs, and everybody speaks Russian, but the Russianness of the place is so concentrated that it feels ridiculously exaggerated. Everything Russian on Brighton Beach is too Russian, far more Russian than in real Russia. This is what happens all over Brooklyn. From the Scandinavians of Bay Ridge to the Chinese of Sunset Park, Brooklyn's immigrants go to ridiculous extremes to re-create their homelands only to end up with a vulgar pastiche. ↗

— Lara Vapnyar

#brooklyn-was-mine #essays #memoirs #food

The clown was an evil one. They’re either good or bad, and this one was definitely the latter. ↗

— Chris Thrall

#chris-thrall #crystal-meth #drugs #eating-smoke #hong-kong

What right does my present have to speak of my past? Has my present some advantage over my past? What "grace" might have enlightened me? except that of passing time, or of a good cause, encountered on my way? ↗

— Roland Barthes

#memory #past #present #time #biography

Conformity is deformity ↗

— Sharon Desruisseaux

#cleopatra #egypt #historical #historical-fiction #isis

Memories establish the past; Senses perceive the present; Imaginations shape the future. ↗

— Toba Beta

#memories #senses #imagination

We have inherited a fear of memories of slavery. It is as if to remember and acknowledge slavery would amount to our being consumed by it. As a matter of fact, in the popular black imagination, it is easier for us to construct ourselves as children of Africa, as the sons and daughters of kings and queens, and thereby ignore the Middle Passage and centuries of enforced servitude in the Americas. Although some of us might indeed be the descendants of African royalty, most of us are probably descendants of their subjects, the daughters and sons of African peasants or workers. ↗

— Angela Y. Davis

#denial #history #memory #slavery #imagination

The faculty of memory cannot be separated from the imagination. They go hand in hand. To one degree or another, we all invent our personal pasts. And for most of us those pasts are built from emotionally colored memories. ↗

— Siri Hustvedt

#memory #past #present #imagination

This is the postmodern desert inhabited by people who are, in effect, consuming themselves in the form of images and abstractions through which their desires, sense of identity, and memories are replicated and then sold back to them as products ↗

— Larry McCaffrey

#consumerism #identity #memory #postmodernism #capitalism

Her body was a prison, her mind was a prison. Her memories were a prison. The people she loved. She couldn't get away from the hurt of them. She could leave Eric, walk out of her apartment, walk forever if she liked, but she couldn't escape what really hurt. Tonight even the sky felt like a prison. ↗

— Ann Brashares

#escape #hurt #leave #love #memories

The undead did not love, but they remembered love with a savage loyalty. ↗

— Kim Harrison

#memory #undead #love