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Bernardine Evaristo Books

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“Amma wanted her daughter to be free, feminist and powerful Later she took her on personal development courses for children to give her the confidence and articulacy to flourish in any setting Big mistake Mum, Yazz said at fourteen when she was pitching to go to Reading Music Festival with her friends, it would be to the detriment of my juvenile development if you curtailed my activities at this critical stage in my journey towards becoming the independent-minded and fully self-expressed adult you expect me to be, I mean, do you really want me rebelling against your old-fashioned rules by running away from the safety of my home to live on the streets and having to resort to prostitution to survive and thereafter drug addiction, crime, anorexia and abusive relationships with exploitative bastards twice my age before my early demise in a crack house? Amma fretted the whole weekend her little girl way away”

Growing UpParentingTeenagersTeen Angst
Book:Girl, Woman, Other
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“I tell Mum she married a patriarch Look at it this way, Amma, she says, your father was born male in Ghana in the 1920s whereas you were born female in London in the 1960s And your point is? You really can’t expect him to ‘get you’, as you put it I let her know she’s an apologist for the patriarchy and complicit in a system that oppresses all women She says human beings are complex I tell her not patronize me”

Growing UpParentingParentsPatriarchy
Book:Girl, Woman, Other
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“And the numerous delays due to vandalism on the tracks or leaves on the line or sun on the line or a body under a train How very inconsiderate, not to her To choose to throw yourself in front of a mechanical iron beast weighing thousands of tons and racing at a top speed of one hundred and forty miles per hour? To choose such a brutal and dramatic finale Carole knows what drives people to such despair, knows what it’s like to appear normal but to feel herself swaying Just one leap away From The amassed crowds on the platforms who carry enough hope in their hearts to stay alive Swaying Just one leap away from Eternal Peace”

DeathSuicide
Book:Girl, Woman, Other
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“The Barbies with their stick legs and rocket breasts were another problem Megan had to endure. She was supposed to spend hours dressing up or playing house with them, including the darker ones she was supposed to find more relatable. In a fit she'd once tried to commit Barbicide, defaced them with colored marker pens, chopped off hair, extracted eyes with scissors and de-limbed a few... The Barbie invasion proliferated on birthdays and at Christmas, relatives talked about incredible collection, as if she'd actually chosen to have them in her life.”

FunnyFictionFeminismDiverse Books
Book:Girl, Woman, Other
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“which will lead to even more of them despairing at the future and what with the planet about to go to shit with the United Kingdom soon to be disunited from Europe which itself is hurtling down the reactionary road and making fascism fashionable again and it’s so crazy that the disgusting perma-tanned billionaire has set a new intellectual and moral low by being president of America and basically it all means that the older generation has RUINED EVERYTHING and her generation is doooooomed”

FascismDonald TrumpTrumpismBrexit
Book:Girl, Woman, Other
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“He pointed out that the mattress in the master boudoir was handspring with each spring wrapped in cashmere It’s like sleeping on air, Miss Williams, he said as he showed her the suite’s ‘menu of pillows’ on a silver-embossed card As if she was the kind of woman who’d amputate her aspirations to become one of his decorative appendages She had to politely extricate herself from his intentions without jeopardizing the business”

FeminismWomanizing
Book:Girl, Woman, Other
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“Amma was shorter, with African hips and thighs perfect slave girl material one director told her when she walked into an audition for a play about Emancipation whereupon she walked right back out again in turn a casting director told Dominique she was wasting his time when she turned up for a Victorian drama when there weren’t any black people in Britain then she said there were, called him ignorant before also leaving the room and in her case, slamming the door”

RacismRacism In The WestRacism In Britain
Book:Girl, Woman, Other
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