So Long Been Dreaming Quotes

“I made myself listen to the birds singing squabbles and love songs. Occasionally I heard a war. Sharp mechanical sounds clashed with the nature music. Bells and whistles mashed together in nagging bursts. My new life was calling. I had to get on with it. Body historians, griots of the galaxy, we didn’t diddle ourselves in jungle paradises, we inhabited flesh to gather a genealogy of life. We sought the story behind all the stories.”
― Nalo Hopkinson, So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy

“We do not know a planet that is home. We are always home. It is our job to see and map and learn languages and stories and carry them from place to place.”
― Nalo Hopkinson, So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy

“This is one of the many truths that she understood but failed to accept: that men are rewarded for destroying life and women for creating it. But that seems to be in the nature of all dualities, for how can we see the radiance of goodness when there is no shadow of evil to set it off?”
― Maya Khankhoje, So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction and Fantasy

“Earth is mighty, indeed," says the doctor. "But there is more than simple might, is there not? Is there not also patience? Is there not also resolve? What lasts longer--a heart that beats hard, or a heart that beats gentle?”
― Greg Van Eekhout, So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction and Fantasy

“Their weapons were their words.”
― Karin Lowachee, So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction and Fantasy

“Much of the folklore on which I draw is European. Even the form in which I write is European. Arguably, one of the most familiar memes of science fiction is that of going to foreign countries and colonizing the natives, and as I've said elsewhere, for many of us, that's not a thrilling adventure story; it's non-fiction, and we are on the wrong side of the strange-looking ship that appears out of nowhere. To be a person of colour writing science fiction is to be under suspicion of having internalized one's colonization.”
― Nalo Hopkinson, So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction and Fantasy

“Panopte’s Eye Tamai Kobayashi”
― Nalo Hopkinson, So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy

“which I draw is European. Even the form in which I write is European. Arguably, one of the most familiar memes of science fiction is that of going to foreign countries and colonizing the natives, and as I’ve said elsewhere, for many of us, that’s not a thrilling adventure story; it’s non-fiction, and we are on the wrong side of the strange-looking ship that appears out of nowhere.”
― Nalo Hopkinson, So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy

“I’m happy to be here,” he thought to himself as he shined an old woman’s mirror, “and I know this is better than the Great Swamp of Ink, but it isn’t what I expected at all.”
― Nalo Hopkinson, So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy

“So much history behind and between people, one moment was always a nasty echo of another time, most of who you were already scripted.”
― Nalo Hopkinson, So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy