Powerful Quotes From LGBTQ+ POC Writers

Now more than ever, there's a need for education and acceptance. June is supposed to be pride month, but this year it's going to be a little different. With the recent protests in response to the tragic deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade and other people of color, it's important we utilize this month to focus on solidarity. Writers like James Baldwin and Alice Walker have altered the POC narrative and queer experience in so many ways. With their words, we've escaped to different worlds and while not being able to directly experience what they have, we were at least given the opportunity to empathize.

Let's focus on what we can learn from each other instead of how different we are. At the end of the day, our differences will never go away but we can utilize them in productive ways. Just like the people who fought for queer rights, these writers have molded our current world and just like them, the fighting, protesting and marching won't stop until the word "equality" really means something for this country. Here are some powerful quotes from LGBTQ+ POC writers:

"It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences."

"I swear to the Lord I still can't see why democracy means everybody but me."

"We should try to understand our innermost needs. We shouldn't use irony to reduce their power."

“I changed the past by walking back into it.”

"Any gay person understands at some point that he or she has to disappear, to become invisible."

"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any."

"I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually."

“The sadness of those who love their own sex and therefore cannot live their lives in the form of a conventional marriage is redoubled by the chagrin of parents—for whom marriage represents the sole pinnacle of womanly achievement—and the opprobrium and scorn of everyone else.”

"If you cannot live the way you want, there is no point in living."

“Love that stammers, that stutters, is apt to be the love that loves best.”

"Seems like God don't see fit to give the black man nothing but dreams - but He did give us children to make them dreams seem worthwhile."

"The dream didn’t leave, people just don’t know a nightmare when they right in the middle of one."

"As I have not worried to be born, I do not worry to die."

"I don't think that any family has a function. I just think that a family is. It just exists."

"When silence is prolonged over a certain period of time, it takes on new meaning."