“The rest of my teachers maybe did the best they could, but they just needed a lot of help making their best better. There were so many things we needed in those classrooms, in our city, in our state, in our country that our teachers could have provided if they would have gone home and really done their homework. They never once said the words: ‘economic inequality,’ ‘housing discrimination,’ ‘sexual violence,’ ‘mass incarceration,’ ‘homophobia,’ ’empire,’ ‘mass eviction,’ ‘post traumatic stress disorder,’ ‘white supremacy,’ ‘patriarchy,’ ‘neo-confederacy,’ ‘mental health,’ or ‘parental abuse,’ yet every student and teacher at that school lived in a world shaped by those words.”

Kiese Laymon, Heavy (Page 114)