Alex Perry > Quotes

“This is the white man’s burden, the noblesse oblige of the missionary, colonist and development professional, who feel a duty to shepherd those unfortunate enough to be trapped in unenlightenment.”
― Alex Perry, The Rift: A New Africa Breaks Free

“Myth was how the ’Ndrangheta assumed a moral purpose when it was self-evidently immoral, how it colored itself romantic and divine when it was base and profane, and how it convinced others it was their righteous champion even as it robbed and murdered them. Myth was how those inside the organization were persuaded they were following a higher code and those outside it found themselves stumped by even the simplest questions, such as who was who. It was all an enormous lie. But it was a lie that explained how, almost without anyone noticing, a small group of families from the wild hills of Italy’s south had become the twenty-first century’s most formidable mafia.”
― Alex Perry, The Good Mothers: The True Story of the Women Who Took On the World’s Most Powerful Mafia – Calabrian Crime Syndicate and the Wives Who Testified Against Violent Misogyny

“The thousands who drown are excruciating evidence that what was once imagined as a global free-for-all has, in practice, turned out to be a buttressing of global inequality: cheap and easy movement for the rich; illegal, costly and even fatal odysseys for the poor.”
― Alex Perry, The Trafficker

“When humanitarians in Africa used the word ‘change’, I’d noticed, they’d mostly been talking about themselves.”
― Alex Perry, The Rift: A New Africa Breaks Free