Second Class Citizen Quotes

“At home in Nigeria, all a mother had to do for a baby was wash and feed him and, if he was fidgety, strap him onto her back and carry on with her work while that baby slept. But in England she had to wash piles and piles of nappies, wheel the child round for sunshine during the day, attend to his feeds as regularly as if one were serving a master, talk to the child, even if he was only a day old! Oh, yes, in England, looking after babies was in itself a full-time job.”
― Buchi Emecheta, Second Class Citizen

“The leaves were still on the trees, but were becoming dry, perched like birds ready to fly off.”
― Buchi Emecheta, Second Class Citizen

“Typical Igbo psychology; men never do wrong, only the women; they have to beg for forgiveness, because they are bought, paid for and must remain like that, silent, obedient slaves.”
― Buchi Emecheta, Second Class Citizen

“One thing she did know was the greatest book on human psychology is the Bible. If you were lazy and did not wish to work, or if you had failed to make your way in society, you could always say, 'My kingdom is not of this world.' If you were a jet-set woman who believed in sleeping around, VD or no VD, you could always say Mary Magdalene had no husband, but didn't she wash the feet of Our Lord? Wasn't she the first person to see our risen saviour? If, in the other hand, you believed in the inferiority of the blacks, you could always say, 'Slaves, obey your masters.' It is a mysterious book, one of the greatest of all books, if not the greatest. Hasn't it got all the answers?”
― Buchi Emecheta, Second Class Citizen

“She did not delude herself into expecting Francis to love her. He had never been taught how to love, but had an arresting way of looking pleased at Adah's achievements.”
― Buchi Emecheta, Second Class Citizen

“Era esse o resultado da Nigéria ter sido governada durante tanto tempo pelos ingleses. A inteligência da pessoa era avaliada pela forma como ela falava inglês. Mas não importava nem um pouco se os ingleses eram ou não capazes de falar as línguas dos povos que governavam.”
― Buchi Emecheta, Cidadã de segunda classe

“She had gambled with marriage, just like most people, but she had gambled unluckily and had lost.”
― Buchi Emecheta, Second Class Citizen

“She, who only a few months previously would have accepted nothing but the best, had by now been conditioned to expect inferior things. She was now learning to suspect anything beautiful and pure. Those things were for the whites, not the blacks.”
― Buchi Emecheta, Second Class Citizen

“Adah could not stop thinking about her discovery that the whites were just as fallible as everyone else. There were bad whites and good whites, just as there were bad blacks and good blacks! Why then did they claim to be superior?”
― Buchi Emecheta, Second Class Citizen

“She told herself to stop being over-romantic and soft. No husband would have time to ask his pregnant wife how she was feeling so early in the morning. That only happened in True Stories and True Romances, not in real life, particularly not with Francis for that matter. But despite the hard talking to herself, she still yearned to be loved, to feel really married, to be cared for.”
― Buchi Emecheta, Second Class Citizen

“But nobody talked of who was going to support her, nobody talked of where she was going to live. So she found herself alone once more, forced into a situation dictated by society in which, as an individual, she had little choice.”
― Buchi Emecheta, Second Class Citizen

“Adah não conseguia deixar de considerar a hipótese de que a genuína discriminação – se é que o nome correto é esse – que sofrera fora mais obra de seus conterrâneos que dos brancos. Se os negros pudessem aprender a viver harmoniosamente uns com os outros, se um senhorio caribenho pudesse aprender a não desprezar os africanos, e se os africanos pudessem aprender a contar menos vantagem quanto às riquezas naturais de seus países, talvez houvesse menos sentimento de inferioridade entre os negros.”
― Buchi Emecheta, Cidadã de segunda classe

“Dreams soon assume substance”
― Buchi Emecheta, Second Class Citizen

“The concept of whiteness could cover a multitude of sins.”
― Buchi Emecheta, Second Class Citizen