“…The responsibility, the burden, is much heavier for us. If we don’t exercise our collective imagination—and not just documentation —we’ll always be at a certain disadvantage. I think what literature could provide us with is showing other possibilities. What I fear most is homogeneity.”

—  Rawi Hage

On the burden of racialized writers to represent their communities in “‘What I Fear Most is Homogeneity’: An Interview with Rawi Hage” https://hazlitt.net/feature/what-i-fear-most-homogeneity-interview-rawi-hage in Hazlitt (2018 Sep 12)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "…The responsibility, the burden, is much heavier for us. If we don’t exercise our collective imagination—and not just d…" by Rawi Hage?
Rawi Hage photo
Rawi Hage3
Canadian writer 1964

Related quotes

Sylvia Plath photo

“What I fear most, I think, is the death of the imagination.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Bruce Springsteen photo

“Now I don't know what it always was with us.
We chose the words, and yeah, we drew the lines.
There was just no way this house could hold the two of us.
I guess that we were just too much of the same kind.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Independence Day"
Song lyrics, The River (1980)

John Lennon photo

“The thing the sixties did was to show us the possibilities and the responsibility that we all had. It wasn't the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Interview for KFRC RKO Radio (8 December 1980)

Ray Bradbury photo

“I believe,” said the first lady, “that our souls are in our hands. For we do everything to the world with our hands. Sometimes I think we don’t use our hands half enough; it’s certain we don’t use our heads.”

Ray Bradbury book The Golden Apples of the Sun

Embroidery (1951)
The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953)

“This is our big chance to see what people think of us. The real us. We have to show em there's nothing to be afraid of. If we don't get over our fears, they never will.”

Lisi Harrison Monster High

Source: Monster High

Hu Shuli photo

“We always think there are stories to do and we don’t think, ‘maybe this environment should be better’. We’ve always felt we could do anything we wanted. It was just based on what our priorities are.”

Hu Shuli (1953) Chinese journalist

As quoted in "AP Interview: Chinese editor Hu Shuli steps aside, not down" in Associated Press (30 January 2018) https://apnews.com/article/china-censorship-business-international-news-asia-pacific-d1f0e45181c64cd0b1a978842a81affa

Meg Cabot photo

“I think we make our own luck. Our parents give us life, but what we do with that life is our own responsibility.”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

Source: Underworld

John Guare photo

“I believe that the imagination is the passport we create to take us into the real world. I believe the imagination is another phrase for what is most uniquely us.”

John Guare Six Degrees of Separation

Source: Six Degrees of Separation

William Hazlitt photo

“We are very much what others think of us.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

The reception our observations meet with gives us courage to proceed, or damps our efforts.
No. 364
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)

Ludwig Wittgenstein photo

“What I give is the morphology of the use of an expression. I show that it has kinds of uses of which you had not dreamed. In philosophy one feels forced to look at a concept in a certain way. What I do is suggest, or even invent, other ways of looking at it. I suggest possibilities of which you had not previously thought. You thought that there was one possibility, or only two at most. But I made you think of others. Furthermore, I made you see that it was absurd to expect the concept to conform to those narrow possibilities. Thus your mental cramp is relieved, and you are free to look around the field of use of the expression and to describe the different kinds of uses of it.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Lectures of 1946 - 1947, as quoted in Ludwig Wittgenstein : A Memoir (1966) by Norman Malcolm, p. 43
1930s-1951

Related topics