56 quotes
God, when will you create a woman who will be fulfilled in herself, a full human being, not anybody’s appendage? she prayed desperately.
The Joys of Motherhood (1979)
Yet that intelligent, enterprising, noble-hearted man was a chattel! Liable, by the laws of a country that calls itself civilized, to be sold with horses and pigs!
The Slave Girl (1977)
Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women. Superadded to the burden common to all, they have wrongs, and sufferings, and mortifications peculiarly their own.
The Slave Girl (1977)
Black women all over the world should re-unite and re-examine the way history has portrayed us.
Every woman should be free to live the life she chooses.
The Joys of Motherhood (1979)
Anything imported was considered to be much better than their own old ways.
The Bride Price (1976)
Few things are as bad as a guilty conscience.
London, having killed Adah's congregational God, created instead a personal God who loomed large and really alive.
When people are not educated enough for the job market, it is like a time bomb ticking away which could explode in the streets.
Head Above Water (1994)
Reader, my story ends with freedom; not in the usual way, with marriage….The dream of my life is not yet realized. I do not sit with my children in a home of my own.
The Slave Girl (1977)
Yet the more I think about it the more I realise that we women set impossible standards for ourselves.
The Joys of Motherhood (1979)
The leaves were still on the trees but were becoming dry, perched like birds ready to fly off.
Writers simply have to write, and not worry so much about what people think, because public opinion is such a difficult horse to ride.
Head Above Water (1994)
An uneducated person has little chance of happiness.
Head Above Water (1994)
Then the thought suddenly struck her. Yes, she would go to school.
Her children were going to be different. They were all going to be black, they were going to enjoy being black, be proud of being black, a black of a different breed.
Did she not feel totally fulfilled when she had completed the manuscript, just as if it were another baby she had had?
This old friend of Adah's paid for the taxi that took her home from Camden Town because he thought she was still with her husband.
Women are capable of living for so many other reasons than men
The concept of whiteness could cover a multitude of sins.