10 quotes
About eight out of every ten educated Africans, most of whom are also professed Christians, still believe firmly in the spirits of their ancestors.
Down Second Avenue (1959)
You’ll come back and be able to look after yourself and the two you’re leaving behind.
Down Second Avenue (1959)
The Black man must enter the white man’s house through the back door. The Black man does most of the dirty work…
Down Second Avenue (1959)
The African sage says nothing belongs to you except what you have eaten: that is the only thing you can be sure of.
Down Second Avenue (1959)
I am an irrepressible teacher, and will teach anywhere I am invited to, as long as I am not asked to play the role of a token nigger.
Down Second Avenue (1959)
We’d never really known father before. And now living close to him and seeing him at close quarters, I realised that his face was unlikeable.
Down Second Avenue (1959)
Afrikans, let us find ourselves happening to events, instead of always responding to events happening to us.
Down Second Avenue (1959)
When they were not working they had children without being able to secure a man they could really call a husband.
Down Second Avenue (1959)
Common suffering unites. But when suffering becomes intolerably acute, when it reduces people to abject, dehumanising poverty and insecurity, suffering disunites.
Down Second Avenue (1959)
In Southern Africa, the black writer talks best about the ghetto life he knows; the white writer best about his own ghetto life. We see each other, black and white, as it were through a keyhole.
Down Second Avenue (1959)