The Old Drift Quotes

“During his time at university, Ronald had learned that 'history' was the word the English used for the record of every time a white man encountered something he had never seen and promptly claimed it as his own, often renaming it for good measure. History, in short, was the annals of the bully on the playground.”
― Namwali Serpell, The Old Drift

“She had never imagined that to be a woman was always, somehow, to be a banishable witch.”
― Namwali Serpell, The Old Drift

“Matha had never considered that being female would thwart her so, that it would be a hurdle she had to jump every time she wanted to learn something: to read a book, to shout the answers, to make a bomb, to love a man, to fight for freedom.”
― Namwali Serpell, The Old Drift

“She stepped from the trashy bedlam of the road into the cool cave of the shop, relieved to escape the experience of walking outside while female.”
― Namwali Serpell, The Old Drift

“Only a sister, an alternative self, could inspire such a sordid mix of disgust and envy.”
― Namwali Serpell, The Old Drift

“The Civil Rights Movement in the US was all about logjams and blockades. Martin Luther King is the one who said “a riot is the language of the unheard”. And the decolonisation of our country wasn’t just boycotts and speeches. It was bombing bridges, too.”
― Namwali Serpell, The Old Drift

“Every family is a war but some are more civil than others.”
― Namwali Serpell, The Old Drift

“Progress is just the word we use to disguise power doing its thing.”
― Namwali Serpell, The Old Drift

“Evolution forged the entirety of life using only one tool: the mistake...”
― Namwali Serpell, The Old Drift

“Their marriage had ceased to be conjugal; his body did not conjugate hers; there was no grammar between them.”
― Namwali Serpell, The Old Drift

“[She] felt that dawning shock that comes when you look at yourself and see a person you once might have pitied.”
― Namwali Serpell, The Old Drift

“Trust our biology, it teaches you better. If you grip too tight, you'll lose the fight. If you stay in one place, you'll fester and waste. When young ones grow full, they must drift from the pool, lest it turn to a watery grave.”
― Namwali Serpell, The Old Drift

“The midwives were still circling the mother’s shipwrecked body, tending to her, murmuring like the sea, the child’s cries like that same sea breaking. Giovanna swaddled the baby in elaborate folds and handed the burden to its bearer. The mother, whose name was Adriana, looked down at the hairy little face and promptly fainted. Giovanna grabbed the baby just before it tumbled off the bed. The midwives laughed. Such drama! The wool would fall out. The whelp had just forgotten to eat it in the womb.”
― Namwali Serpell, The Old Drift

“Equality!’ he cried. ‘You see? Only from level ground can you grow new crops. The war taught me that all men are equal before death, black and white. And yesterday,’ he shrugged, ‘Miss Matha showed me that this equality thing probably includes the females, too.”
― Namwali Serpell, The Old Drift

“Now, as her baby wept for hunger and as she herself wept distractedly - weeping was just what she did now, who she was - Matha felt that dawning shock that comes when you look at yourself and see a person you once might have pitied.”
― Namwali Serpell, The Old Drift

“Ding. The cabin lights came on...The flight attendants paced the aisles like antic tightrope walkers, with fixed smiles and mussed make-up. They were done with coddling. They snatched Naila's blankets and demanded her headset, they claimed her rubbish and chastised her tilted seat.”
― Namwali Serpell, The Old Drift

“Old like her father was old, a shaggy shambling old, an old where you'd lost the order of things and felt so sad that you simply had to embrace the loss, reassuring yourself with the lie that you hadn't really wanted all that order to begin with.”
― Namwali Serpell, The Old Drift

“They were not kings. The empire was a frikkin sham. They were colonialists, and for that you only need brute force – nothing to boast of when you have it. Power’s just an accident that depends on the weakness of others.”
― Namwali Serpell, The Old Drift

“Stephen Hawking once said, ‘Without imperfection, neither you nor I would exist.’ Every small stray opens up a new way, an Eden of forking digressions.”
― Namwali Serpell, The Old Drift

“dwindle. Vultures! We started this nation with potential. “A society of the people!” Kaunda said. But somehow we narrowed until it was just for the top three per cent. The capitalists replaced the colonialists. And”
― Namwali Serpell, The Old Drift

“She felt comfortable here, among the poor. She understood the constant complaining that surrounded them like the droning of insects. They were right: it was all just luck, just circumstance.”
― Namwali Serpell, The Old Drift

“She woke up to her sister sitting across from her.”
― Namwali Serpell, The Old Drift