"The thin rain, falling past the square of my lighted window, looks like damp, finely-sifted flour, white against the black background of the road." -- Colette, Vagabond, 1910 (111)
"What does a victorious or defeated black woman's body in a historically white space look like? Serena and her big sister Venus Williams brought to mind Zora Neale Hurston's 'I feel most coloured when I am thrown against a sharp white background.' This appropriated line, stencilled in canvas by Glenn Ligon, who used plastic letter stencils, smudging oil sticks, and graphite to transform the words into abstractions, seemed to be ad copy for some aspect of life for all black bodies." -- Claudia Rankine, Citizen: an American Lyric, 2014 (25)
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