I Wish I Had A Red Dress by Pearl Cleage

"Here's what I believe: life is much harder than anybody can possibly tell you, but it doesn't matter because even if they could, you wouldn't believe them and what good would it do anyway?"
(p. 9)

"...distinctions are important. It's like the Eskimos having so many different words for snow. People always name carefully what they have to come up against to survive. An avalanche and flurries are both snow, but one will kill you..."
(p. 125)

"Sometimes your ego will tell you it's important to get the credit for assisting in somebody else's growth and development, but it's not. What's important is that Johnny now had a new piece of information he could use."
(p. 129)

"'Nobody ever dies of a broken heart. They just think they will.'"
(p. 191)

"Sister says confession without closure is just whining."
(p. 195)

"I'm old enough to know that sometimes the magic works and sometimes it doesn't."
(p. 199)

"There is no enemy. There's just a lot of complicated human beings, some more damaged than others."
(p. 311)

• doctrinaire: dogmatist; a stubborn person of arbitrary or arrogant opinions; stubbornly insistent on theory without regard for practicality or suitability
• "the personal is political" (p. 177)
• "conscious use of language" (p. 210)
• "free-floating rage" (p. 254)

Pearl Cleage postulates that "the beginning of doubt is the end of faith" (8). But I think that the beginning of doubt is really the beginning of true understanding. Belief does not demand blind faith or devotion; when you believe in an idea, you begin with the structure - the initial, primitive idea - which then fleshes & rounds itself out with every new evaluation.

Is Cleage saying that integration strengthened or weakened class ties in Idlewild?