They regard the NAACP as a Negro snob affair, and I have been trying from Philadelphia to Topeka in the West to disabuse their minds of such a preposterous idea.

Americans always feel bad. They wander the globe carrying this opulent burden. They take digital photographs and buy folk art, feeling a dull disappointment in themselves, and in the world. They bulldoze forests with tears in their eyes.

- Daniel Alarcón, "Absence"