No analysis of any form of oppression in a Western context is complete without an analysis of the role played by whiteness. To put this another way, every form of oppression that exists in the Western world--yes, including class--is an oppression of white supremacy and its zealous ambition to scale the peak of human civilization and evolution. The white women of history have been given a pass for their role in colonialism and the institutionalization of white supremacy. We say they were "of their time" and didn't know better, or assume they acted out of either fear or ignorance. The truth is that calling them women "of their time" can be a legitimate excuse only if there were no serious challenges to their racist worldview in their time. Of course there were such challenges.
                                                 - WT/BS

The wolf looked at me impassively. We stood in a quiet meadow, tall grasses waving among the flowers, bees buzzing in lazy air currents. The wood lay leafy and ordinary behind us, not even a hint of snow in sight. Ahead rose a lone hill, sharp and brown against the sky. It was midmorning, or a little past.

"Where are we?" I whispered, my voice hoarse and my lungs aching. The enormity of what I had done threatened to overwhelm me. All I could see was my father, hurtling away on Tinker's cart.

"The house under the mountain," returned the wolf. "My house."

And he stepped toward the hill.

They had waited long enough. Perhaps he had given too much credence to the magic. . . . . Though Adalbert had ruminated on the plan a hundred times, a small twinge of guilt pierced his thoughts.

Elsie bumped into him, the way she used to when they were dating. "Stop it," she said scolding. "You are too old. Your first allegiance is to the legacy of the queen. We cannot help Poland tonight. They are coming and we cannot stop them. God be merciful."

. . . The queen's legacy had never been moved such a great distance.
​                                          - chapter one

The flowers woke me first, quietly tiptoeing into my sleep and casting a sweet floral filter over everything. I felt myself smile, breathing in the soft bouquet.

Then came the smoke.

Black, burning, and unforgivably present, it wafted in with an acrid bite, curdling my dreams into nightmares. My eyes flashed open and instantly watered as I stared into the rafters.

Was that shouting?
​                                                      p.116

"I don't know much. She controls the frost, or the frost controls her, or they're the same thing. They say she made a deal with the dark powers, that love would never hurt her again. . . . The devil took her heart and turned it cold. Now she loves however she likes, and when she's tired of them, she wraps them in ice. She keeps them in her palace in the farthest north, they say, all pretty boys like frozen flowers."
​                                                       p. 96 

There were twelve of us: the Thaumas Dozen. Now we stood in a small line, my seven sisters and I, and I couldn't help but wonder if there was a ring of truth to the grim speculations. Had we somehow angered the gods? Had a darkness branded itself on our family, taking us out one by one? Or was it simply a series of terrible and unlucky coincidences?
                                                            p. 4

Khalil drops the brush in the door and cranks up his stereo, blasting an old rap song Daddy has played a million times. I frown. "Why you always listening to that stuff?"

"Man, get outta here! Tupac was the truth."

"Yeah, twenty years ago."
​
"Nah, even now. Like, check this." He points at me, which means he's about to go into one of his Khalil philosophical moments. "'Pac said Thug Life stood for 'The Hate U Give Little Infants Fucks Everybody.'"
                                                          p. 17

The Breedloves did not live in a storefront because they were having temporary difficulty adjustitng to the cutbacks at the plant. They lived there because they were poor and black, and they stayed there because they believed they were ugly. Although their poverty was traditional and stultifying, it was not unique. But their ugliness was unique. No one could have convinced them that they were not relentlessly and aggressively ugly. Except for the father, Cholly, whose ugliness (the result of despair, dissipation, and violence directed toward petty things and weak people) was behavior, the rest of the family--Mrs. Breedlove, Sammy Breedlove, and Pecola Breedlove--wore their ugliness, put it on, so to speak, although it did not belong to them.
​                                                          p.38

Candy cried, "Sure they all want it. Everybody wants a little bit of land, not much. Jus' som'thin' that was his. Somethin' he could live on and there couldn't nobody throw him off of it. I never had none. I planted crops for damn near every'body in this state, but they wasn't my crops, and when I harvested 'em, it wasn't none of my harvest. But we gonna do it now, and don't make no mistake about that. George ain't got the money in town. That money's in the bank. Me an' Lennie an' George. We gonna have a room to ourself. We're gonna have a dog an' rabbits an' chickens. We're gonna have green corn an' maybe a cow or a goat." He stopped, overwhelmed with his picture.

"My beautiful princesses," Dad says when the music pauses and the food stops its endless parade through the hall. "I'm delighted to introduce the  esteemed royals of our neighboring kingdoms to my marvelous girls. Not only are they lovely and kind, we have also seen over the past five years  that they are brave. And strong. Stronger than the rest of us. So strong they are enduring the worst spell our kingdom has ever seen."
                                                  p.65