"African-Americans know about racism, but I don't think we really know the causes. I decided it's first of all a family problem."

Family

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Thematic Reflection

This quotation examines the core nature of Family as articulated by Bebe Moore Campbell. Within historical and literary traditions, reflections on Family provide actionable mental models, challenging individuals to evaluate personal ethics, self-discipline, and daily actions.

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About Bebe Moore Campbell

Bebe Moore Campbell was an American author, journalist, and teacher. Campbell was the author of three New York Times bestsellers: Brothers and Sisters, Singing in the Comeback Choir, and What You Owe Me, which was also a Los Angeles Times "Best Book of 2001". Her other works include the novel Your Blues Ain't Like Mine, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and the winner of the NAACP Image Award for Literature; her memoir, Sweet Summer: Growing Up With and Without My Dad; and her first nonfiction book, Successful Women, Angry Men: Backlash in the Two-Career Marriage. Her essays, articles, and excerpts appear in many anthologies.

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More by Bebe Moore Campbell

"Race, redemption and healing - that's my thing."

— Bebe Moore Campbell
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"I have to entertain, because if I don't entertain you, you're not going to continue reading. But if I'm not out to enlighten, or change your mind about something, or change your behavior, then I really don't want to take the journey."

— Bebe Moore Campbell
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"I would get up at 3 in the morning and write. Or sometimes I would write at midnight. Or I would write when my child napped. It wasn't a burden. I was so enthused about what I was doing at the time that I really didn't mind."

— Bebe Moore Campbell
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"I had an agent who spent eight years - eight years! - trying to sell my stories. She sold other people's work; she just didn't sell mine."

— Bebe Moore Campbell
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More about Family

"Even if you plan a marriage and a family, you are never quite prepared for the reality versus how you imagined it. In a lot of ways it's better, and in a lot of ways it's worse. That's life, right?"

— Katherine Heigl
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"The true poet for me is a priest. As soon as he dons the cassock, he must leave his family."

— Gustave Flaubert
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"Actors are one family over the entire world."

— Eleanor Roosevelt
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"When I came home for the summer after my first year of college, I told my mother that my best friend and I were driving to California. She laughed out loud - 2,000 miles in a what? Well, my best friend had an old Chevy. What could go wrong?"

— Jane Smiley
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