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  • We have it in our power to begin the world over again.
    — Thomas Paine
  • “Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do... but how much love we put in that action.
    — Mother Teresa
  • The beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding that life without wonder is not worth living.
    — Abraham Joshua Heschel
  • In a time of destruction, create something.
    — Maxine Hong Kingston
  • Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.
    — James Baldwin
  • As a woman I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world.
    — Virginia Woolf
  • I don't believe in charity. I believe in solidarity. Charity is so vertical. It goes from the top to the bottom. Solidarity is horizontal. It respects the other person. I have a lot to learn from other people.
    — Eduardo Galeano
  • Poetry is a political act because it involves telling the truth.
    — June Jordan
  • Ring the bells that still can ring
    Forget your perfect offering
    There is a crack in everything
    That's how the light gets in
    — Leonard Cohen
  • Power is not brute force and money; power is in your spirit. Power is in your soul. It is what your ancestors, your old people gave you. Power is in the earth; it is in your relationship to the earth.
    — Winona LaDuke
  • 'Nihil humanum a me alienum puto,’ said the Roman poet Terence: ‘Nothing human is alien to me.’ The slogan of the old Immigration and Naturalization Service could have been the reverse: To us, no aliens are human.
    — Christopher Hitchens
  • 'Nihil humanum a me alienum puto,’ said the Roman poet Terence: ‘Nothing human is alien to me.’ The slogan of the old Immigration and Naturalization Service could have been the reverse: To us, no aliens are human.
    — Christopher Hitchens
  • 'Nihil humanum a me alienum puto,’ said the Roman poet Terence: ‘Nothing human is alien to me.’ The slogan of the old Immigration and Naturalization Service could have been the reverse: To us, no aliens are human.
    — Christopher Hitchens
  • 'Nihil humanum a me alienum puto,’ said the Roman poet Terence: ‘Nothing human is alien to me.’ The slogan of the old Immigration and Naturalization Service could have been the reverse: To us, no aliens are human.
    — Christopher Hitchens
  • 'Nihil humanum a me alienum puto,’ said the Roman poet Terence: ‘Nothing human is alien to me.’ The slogan of the old Immigration and Naturalization Service could have been the reverse: To us, no aliens are human.
    — Christopher Hitchens
  • 'Nihil humanum a me alienum puto,’ said the Roman poet Terence: ‘Nothing human is alien to me.’ The slogan of the old Immigration and Naturalization Service could have been the reverse: To us, no aliens are human.
    — Christopher Hitchens
  • 'Nihil humanum a me alienum puto,’ said the Roman poet Terence: ‘Nothing human is alien to me.’ The slogan of the old Immigration and Naturalization Service could have been the reverse: To us, no aliens are human.
    — Christopher Hitchens
  • 'Nihil humanum a me alienum puto,’ said the Roman poet Terence: ‘Nothing human is alien to me.’ The slogan of the old Immigration and Naturalization Service could have been the reverse: To us, no aliens are human.
    — Christopher Hitchens
  • 'Nihil humanum a me alienum puto,’ said the Roman poet Terence: ‘Nothing human is alien to me.’ The slogan of the old Immigration and Naturalization Service could have been the reverse: To us, no aliens are human.
    — Christopher Hitchens
  • 'Nihil humanum a me alienum puto,’ said the Roman poet Terence: ‘Nothing human is alien to me.’ The slogan of the old Immigration and Naturalization Service could have been the reverse: To us, no aliens are human.
    — Christopher Hitchens
  • 'Nihil humanum a me alienum puto,’ said the Roman poet Terence: ‘Nothing human is alien to me.’ The slogan of the old Immigration and Naturalization Service could have been the reverse: To us, no aliens are human.
    — Christopher Hitchens
  • 'Nihil humanum a me alienum puto,’ said the Roman poet Terence: ‘Nothing human is alien to me.’ The slogan of the old Immigration and Naturalization Service could have been the reverse: To us, no aliens are human.
    — Christopher Hitchens
  • 'Nihil humanum a me alienum puto,’ said the Roman poet Terence: ‘Nothing human is alien to me.’ The slogan of the old Immigration and Naturalization Service could have been the reverse: To us, no aliens are human.
    — Christopher Hitchens
  • Living everyday in the presence of those who refuse to acknowledge your humanity takes great courage.
    — Min Jin Lee
  • Recognize yourself in he and she who are not like you and me.
    — Carlos Fuentes
  • Make up a story... For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don't tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief's wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear's caul.
    — Toni Morrison
  • In a brutal country like ours, where human life is ‘cheap’, it's stupid to destroy yourself for the sake of your beliefs. Beliefs? High ideas? Only people in rich countries can enjoy such luxuries.
    — Orhan Pamuk
  • What has happened to us in this country? If we study our own history, we find that we have always been ready to receive the unfortunate from other countries, and though this may seem a generous gesture on our part, we have profited a thousand fold by what they have brought us.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
  • There’s a secret war on women going on in the world. Secret even to us. Secret even though we know it.
    — Tommy Orange
  • It is a cultural trait in America to think in terms of very short time periods. My advice is: learn history. Take responsibility for history. Recognize that sometimes things take a long time to change. If you look at your history in this country, you find that for most rights, people had to struggle. People in this era forget that and quite often think they are entitled, and are weary of struggling over any period of time.
    — Winona LaDuke
  • Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.
    — James Baldwin
  • The images of peace are ephemeral. The language of peace is subtle. The reasons for peace, the definitions of peace, the very idea of peace have to be invented, and invented again
    — Maxine Hong Kingston
  • Exile is more than a geographical concept. You can be an exile in your homeland, in your own house, in a room.
    — Mahmoud Darwish
  • But it makes an immigrant laugh to hear the fears of the nationalist, scared of infection, penetration, miscegenation, when this is small fry, peanuts, compared to what the immigrant fears—dissolution, disappearance.
    — Zadie Smith
  • Compassion is a verb.
    — Thich Nhat Hanh
  • Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.
    — Simone Weil
  • Americans on the average do not trust intellectuals, but they are cowed by power and stunned by celebrity.
    — Viet Thanh Nguyen
  • In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.
    — Toni Morrison
  • Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.
    — Rumi
  • Anger, when it's used to act, when used nonviolently, has power.
    — Sandra Cisneros

About

(un)common sense is a digital chapbook featuring stories about people forcibly displaced because of hatred, violence, war, poverty, climate change, and otherness. We hope to honor here immigrants, refugees, migrants, the exiled, and persecuted peoples, as well as those who provide(d) sanctuary—small and large—to those suffering from forced displacement.

This volume of (un)common sense is devoted to the theme of displacement and features prize-winning work by students at Fordham University in New York City. We dedicate this collection to the incomparable author and Fordham University professor Elizabeth Stone, who writes essays, collects oral histories of immigrants, studies family stories, and encourages her students to articulate what she calls the precious legacy of family narratives.

We hope to see many stories in this space, and invite you to become a curator of a volume with a particular theme. Please get in touch with us by email at uncommonsensechapbook@gmail.com and let us know what you might have in mind.

This chapbook is a publication of Welcome Table Press, an independent, nonprofit press dedicated to celebrating and publishing the essay, in all its forms. Welcome Table Press is staffed entirely by volunteers and funded by the generosity of writers and readers. To view the first iteration of (un)common sense, published on the day of the presidential inauguration in January 2017, please click here.

For this volume, the curator was Kim Dana Kupperman.

Website Guru: Mary E. Lide

Social Media Editor: Delaney McLemore

Follow us on Facebook at: facebook.com/uncommonsensechapbook