Esi Edugyan
Esi Edugyan has a Masters in Writing from Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars. Her work has appeared in several anthologies, including Best New American Voices 2003, ed. Joyce Carol Oates, and Revival: An Anthology of Black Canadian Writing (2006).
Her debut novel, The Second Life of Samuel Tyne, was published internationally. It was nominated for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, was a More Book Lust selection, and was chosen by the New York Public Library as one of 2004's Books to Remember.
Edugyan has held fellowships in the US, Scotland, Iceland, Germany, Hungary, Finland, Spain and Belgium. She has taught creative writing at both Johns Hopkins University and the University of Victoria, and has sat on many international panels, including the LesART Literary Festival in Esslingen, Germany, the Budapest Book Fair in Hungary, and Barnard College in New York City.
She currently lives in Victoria, British Columbia.
“Ain't no glory made from being dependable.”
“Do you still call it talent, if it blooms without any kind of nurturing? That's got to be something else.She made talent sound like a damned insult.”
“To me, chocolate was the sole reason we on this earth.”
“Ain't no man can outrun his fate.”
“It ain’t fair. Gifts is divided so damn unevenly. Like God just left his damn sack of talents in a ditch somewhere and said, “Go help yourselves, ladies and gents.Them’s that get there first can help themselves to the biggest ones. In every other walk of life, a jack can work to get what he want. but ain’t no amount of toil going get you a lick more talent than you born with. Geniuses ain’t made, brother, they just is. and I just was not.”
“Tell me bout this caveman with the clam moustache been barkin speeches all over Germany.”
“The kid come in at a strange angle, made the notes glitter like crystal.”
“Jazz. Here in Germany it become something worse than a virus. We was all of us damn fleas, us Negroes and Jews and low-life hoodlums, set on playing that vulgar racket, seducing sweet blond kids into corruption and sex. It was a plague sent out by the dread black hordes, engineered by the Jews. Us Negroes, see, we was only half to blame - we just can't help it. Savages just got a natural feel for filthy rhythms, no self-control to speak of. But the Jews, brother, now they cooked up this jungle music on purpose. All part of their master plan to weaken Aryan youth, corrupt its janes, dilute its bloodlines.”
“It ain't really Czechoslovakian,' I said, coughing. 'We used to call it the Cheque. Like, you drink it up now, you pay for it later.”
“Her lips was hot, like the ridge of a cooking dish.”
“Chip said it was his piano hands - one ain't never doing the same thing as the other.”
“The cabbie's eyes sort of glazed over. Canada kills any conversation quick, I learned long ago. It's a little trick of mine.”
“Chip recons that he is charming as hell, and who am I to poke holes in his theory. That means that sometimes lies leave his mouth dressed like truth. He just can’t help it.”
“The only time I ever saw him untidy was after a fight. What a sight that was. James Bond run through a blender. You know the other fella probably got off worse.”
“This sky, Sid.It's the sky of the great epics.The great Polish epics. Of Pan Tadeusz”
“She laughed. I closed my eyes. It sounded damn mournful, that laugh of hers echoing off the square.”
“There's all sorts of ways to live, Chip. Some of them you give a lot. Some of them you take a lot. Art, jazz, it was a kind of taking. You take from the audience, you take from yourself.”
“Folks think a lifetime is a thing stretched out over years. It ain't. It can happen quick as a match in a dark room.”
“It's like that, I guess, when the past come to collect what you owe.”
“I guess mercy is a muscle like any other. You got to exercise it, or it just cramp right up.”