Reading is The Right and Honorable Thing, Quotes by Marcus Mosiah Garvey

Marcus Garvey's father had an extensive library in his home and as a boy, Marcus spent countless hours reading every book he could dig his nose into. Garvey's ideas were definitely BIG, grand, outside the box, imaginative. His Pan-African  thinking was so far advanced for his time. For example, he imagined an African Union before there was such a thing and dreamed of the motherland being developed by Africans, at home and abroad. 
Moral of the story: Read! And start a library for your youth.

"Read!" Marcus Garvey instructed.

"Use every spare minute you have in reading. If you are going on a journey that would take you an hour carry something with you to read for that hour until you have reached the place. If you are sitting down waiting for somebody, have something in your pocket to read until the person comes. Don't waste time. Any time you think you have to waste put it in reading something. Carry with you a small pocket dictionary and study words whilst waiting or travelling, or a small pocket volume on some particular subject. Read through at least one book every week separate and distinct from your newspapers and journals. "

"Never forget that intelligence rules the world and ignorance carries the burden."

"The greatest men and women in the world burn the midnight lamp. That is to say, when their neighbours and household are gone to bed, they are reading, studying and thinking. When they rise in the morning they are always ahead of their neighbours and their household in the thing that they were studying[,] reading and thinking of. A daily repetition of that will carry them daily ahead and above their neighbours and household. Practise this rule. It is wise to study a couple of subjects at a time. As for instance a little geography, a little psychology, a little ethics, a little theology, a little philosophy, a little mathematics, a little science on which a sound academic education is built."

"One must never stop reading. Read every thing that you can that is of standard knowledge. Don't waste time reading trashy literature... The idea is that personal experience is not enough for a human to get all the useful knowledge of life, because the individual life is too short, so we must feed on the experience of others."

"Read history incessantly until you master it, This means your own national history, the history of the world - social history industrial history and the history of the different sciences; but primarily the history of man. If you do not know what went on before you came here and what is happening at the time you live, but away from you, you will not know the world and will be ignorant of the world and mankind."

"A reading man or woman is a ready man or woman; but a writing man or woman is exact."

If you want more Marcus Garvey quotes, check these out!

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WHY A BOOK IS A GREAT GIFT FOR A CHILD

                            Give A Child A Book! Reading Lights An Imagination
                                        by K. Omodele @TheAbeng

"Read! Read! Read! and never stop until you discover the knowledge of the Universe!" ~ Marcus Garvey, instructing an audience in St. Kitts, British West Indies in 1937

I'll never forget the first book I ever read on my own from cover to cover- The Red Brigade. I was six and I read page after page for what seemed like the whole day; but, when I closed it, I felt big- bigger than my suck-a-finger self, bigger than dunking my butter bread in my tea, big like my mother's good-good school friend with the pretty, wide eyes, who used to pick me up and hug me up tight, but no more because now I could help her read all them heavy school books she had and maybe even get married because now I had read about it, she was sure to invite me to her socialist party.

The next book I remember reading was The Little Man, another children's book, about a slave boy that tore from plantation to plantation spreading news that the slaves were uprising. I was fascinated by the adventure of the insurrection; the graphics and descriptions of the pounding of the drums fixed my mind on the hand-crafted drum my beloved Auntie gifted my older cousins and me. The carved and chiseled wood, the stretched-tight goat skin over the head of the drum resembled the drawings in the book. How old could the drum be?

From then on, I patted the drum faster, pounded it harder, sprinting mile after mile, from plantation to plantation, rebelling. "Rise up! Burn down de cane fields!"

A book is a precious gift for a child. It can spark the imagination, ignite creativity and transport a young mind to intriguing places and times. A book can be more life impacting than a pair of Jordan's and leave longer-lasting impressions than a Polo shirt. Gifting a child a book sends a life message: reading must be valued; knowledge is better than silver and gold.

Mother To Son: Go Read a Book!

Drawing property rights to The Abeng.../ YardCore Int'l, Publishing

Copyright 2010 K. Omodele

One sun-parched, Third World July noon, a mother scurries around a metal-creaking kerosene stove, simmering curry chicken and white rice in enamel pots when she notices her eleven-year old son fingering a string, making diamonds.
Mother to Son:
“Boy, yuh bored, nuh?”
He snorts but doesn’t look up.
“If yuh bored, go and read a book! You can travel round the world in a book.”
The boy throws away the string. “OK, Mummie.”

Years later in Foreign, one January evening with the mercury sinking two degrees below zero, she’s stirring up marrow-heating soup with provisions and dumplings. He’s in his mid-teens and she refuses to buy more than one T.V., which she locks and keys in her bedroom.
“You won’t be like the typical American pickney*, nursing on no boob tube. This thing dims out yuh wits. It too visual. It show and tell you what to think, so yuh don’t even use your imagination to picture what nice piece a chicken would look like, smell like. I want yuh wonder and envision what a Andorran sunset look like, why blood deh in George Jackson eye, what Gambia mussy** feel like to Kunta Kinte. I don’t want yuh depend on the T.V. to show you.”
“Mummie, everybody I know in school got a T.V. in their room. We living in Foreign now. Is Foreign.”
“And wha happen to that? Well then read a foreign book, then. You not getting no T.V. in yuh room. Hear me, GO READ A BOOK!”

One morning three years later he’s taking this girl, Missy, home from Days Inn after a night that began in a dancehall with her gazing at his rope chain. He pulls his BMW up outside The Blue Nile across the street from Howard University. He doesn’t live with Mummie anymore and now three T.V.’s sit like Great Propagators around his apartment.

The girl’s eyes furrow. “What you stop here for?”

She half hides a chuckle and hurries behind him into the bookstore.

He nods at the girl behind the counter, “Morning,” and heads straight to the new releases where he snatches up Assata Shakur’s autobiography and marches back to the counter.

As he hands the book to the cashier, he feels Missy stare. He glares back.

She says, “I don’t mean no harm but I ain’t never known no nigga that bought no book.” She glances around the Blue Nile. “Shit, I ain’t never been with no nigga in no bookstore.”

He winces while paying fifteen dollars for the book. “You still ain’t.”

“Ain’t what?”

“Been with no nigga in no bookstore.” He spat. “I ain’t no nigga, dutty gyal***” He can feel Mummie grimacing.

The cashier gives him his change and a grin.

The girl catches her jaw before it hits the ground. “You look like a nigga to me!” she says, snaking her neck.

“And you sound like a dutty gyal to me. Go read a book, any book.”

He two-steps out the door, the girl at his heels.

*child
**must be

***dirty girl

Copyright 2010 K.Omodele


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