“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 Source: Girl, Woman, Other
“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 Source: Girl, Woman, Other
“Amma misses her daughter now she’s away at university Not the spiteful snake that slithers out of her tongue to hurt her mother, because in Yazz’s world young people are the only ones with feelings” Growing UpParental Love Book:Girl, Woman, Other Source: Girl, Woman, Other