"A week before we were to move I was to leave for Washington. The church gave a reception for me, the first person from our church to go to college, and everybody brought gifts and laughed and new that I would make good. But I left Howard after two years. Lost my scholarship because I didn't study. I didn't have to, I thought. I didn't have to know about science and geography and things that I didn't want to know. I was a Dahomey woman. And so I came home to a disappointed and confused Mama and Daddy who was furious and defensive and sad."
~~ from Good Woman: Poetry and a Memoir 1969--1980 by Lucille Clifton
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