A Conspiracy of Mothers Quotes

“There could be no undoing of what had been broken. Only a bid to set it right.”
― Colleen van Niekerk, A Conspiracy of Mothers

“Forgiveness is work, a privileged thing to be earned.”
― Colleen van Niekerk, A Conspiracy of Mothers

“Diversity is not colorful frosting to add to the top of a homogeneous, largely white cake but is literally borne in the bones of every single human being and society.”
― Colleen van Niekerk, A Conspiracy of Mothers

“Still, there wasn’t a fear greater than for the safety and well-being of his children.”
― Colleen van Niekerk, A Conspiracy of Mothers

“It’s white guilt, Ingrid, picking up the coloured and the African from the side of the road; it will make a nice story for their friends. They can say, See how liberal we are; see how far we have come.” She searched his face and saw hurt beneath the stoicism. “So much suffering for a few people to live like this,” he continued.”
― Colleen van Niekerk, A Conspiracy of Mothers

“Time did nothing for mothers to dull the pain of a child’s tragedy.”
― Colleen van Niekerk, A Conspiracy of Mothers

“It was then, thinking of her children and that grandchild, that Rachel looked back. She held out a single wrinkled hand. She would not cry. She had mothered not one but two generations, and mothering meant you had no choice but to keep going.”
― Colleen van Niekerk, A Conspiracy of Mothers

“War fucks you up, Yolanda; there’s no question. There’s no glory, no swagger. You bring the dust and the heat, the blood, the smell—it all comes with you. Everything sticks to you like dirt.”
― Colleen van Niekerk, A Conspiracy of Mothers

“Coloureds demonizing Blacks was apartheid served cold: the vicious cycle of oppressed groups doing the oppressor’s work.”
― Colleen van Niekerk, A Conspiracy of Mothers

“Middle age, Ingrid realized, was something she had always thought of as a state of pending stasis, of people settling into the ailments and accommodations that would see them through to old age. Looking at her mother in the morning light, she realized that this was a woman still in a state of becoming.”
― Colleen van Niekerk, A Conspiracy of Mothers

“Determining who was coloured was largely dependent on racism’s twin: colorism. Segregating groups by the lightness of their skin created a pecking order, which enabled the government to apply the rule of divide and conquer among those of color. Once internalized, these divisions were often passed down generation to generation.”
― Colleen van Niekerk, A Conspiracy of Mothers

“Africa is not a music concert or a flagpole for you to hang your salvation on. Real people live there.”
― Colleen van Niekerk, A Conspiracy of Mothers

“You bring the dust and the heat, the blood, the smell—it all comes with you. Everything sticks to you like dirt.”
― Colleen van Niekerk, A Conspiracy of Mothers