CURATED COLLECTION

Reinventing Yourself

You are not obligated to remain the person others decided you were — reinvention is always available.

30 quotes found

“
Reject the foreign customs and return to the sacred practices of our ancestors.

—PapahurihiaProphet

Industrial Age ERA • Oceania

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I am a true daughter of Acoliland; I am not a half‑caste.

—Okot p'BitekPoet & Anthropologist

Post-War ERA • East Africa

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Memory is a political act; it invents the present and dreams of the future.

—Tomás Eloy MartínezJournalist & Novelist

Late Modern ERA • Latin America

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Let no one uproot the Pumpkin.

—Okot p'BitekPoet & Anthropologist

Post-War ERA • East Africa

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I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.

—Louisa May AlcottNovelist & Poet

Industrial Age ERA • North America

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Reading the world always precedes reading the word.

—Paulo FreirePhilosopher

Late Modern ERA • Latin America

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A woman's place is everywhere.

—Flora NwapaNovelist

Post-War ERA • West Africa

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She was becoming herself, casting aside that fictitious self we assume to appear before the world.

—Kate ChopinAuthor

Industrial Age ERA • North America

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The harem is not a place. It is a frontier in the mind.

—Fatima MernissiFeminist, Sociologist & Author

Contemporary ERA • North Africa

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Africa will write its own history, and in both north and south it will be a history of glory and dignity.

—Patrice LumumbaScholar & Thinker

Post-War ERA • West Africa

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Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.

—John F. KennedyPresident

Post-War ERA • North America

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Marriage is not the only destination for a woman.

—Flora NwapaNovelist

Post-War ERA • West Africa

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Gender is not a natural given, but a social construct.

—Ifi AmadiumeScholar, Poet & Feminist

Late Modern ERA • West Africa

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We didn't invent poetry; we just modernized it.

—Abiodun OyewolePoet

Post-War ERA • North America

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Memory is a political act.

—Yvonne VeraNovelist

Late Modern ERA • Southern Africa

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Liberation of the imagination is liberation from the 'false consciousness' of the established society.

—Herbert MarcusePhilosopher & Sociologist

Post-War ERA • Western Europe

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Change your life or change your mirror.

—Rosario CastellanosPoet, Novelist & Diplomat

Post-War ERA • Latin America

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Nobody frees themselves from a cage without having flown.

—Lya LuftNovelist & Poet

Late Modern ERA • Latin America

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I am not African because I was born in Africa, but because Africa was born in me.

—Taiye SelasiAuthor

Digital Age ERA • West Africa

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To survive the Borderlands, you must live sin fronteras, be a crossroads.

—Gloria AnzaldúaTheorist & Writer

Late Modern ERA • North America

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