African Literature Quotes & Sayings

Yet Nathan appreciated being alone as he sipped his cold glass of beer. It gave him time to think. In the next thirty minutes or so, the flight he was waiting for would land and his day would begin. It was autumn in the capital, and the clear skies created an illusion of a city that was at peace with itself. — Marko Phiri

He doesn't tell Aunt Fostalina she looks good, like I've heard other people do; he tells her she looks like sunrise. — NoViolet Bulawayo

We may differ in the language we speak, yet we all remain children of the land. — John Okechukwu Munonye

We should, I think, proceed to enquire into what we mean by ideals - or rather, to examine, critically, the nature of those acts which to us appear to be outward manifestations of idealisms — John Okechukwu Munonye

i have been told many times by family, friends, colleagues and strangers that I, a black African Muslim lesbian, am not included in this vision; that my dreams are a reflection of my upbringing in a decadent, amoral Western society that has corrupted who I really am. But who am I, really? Am I allowed to speak for myself or must my desires form the battleground for causes I do not care about? My answer to that is simple: 'no one allows anyone anything.' By rejecting that notion you discover that only you can give yourself permission on how to lead your life, naysayers be damned. In the end something gives way. The earth doesn't move but something shifts. That shift is change and change is the layman's lingo for that elusive state that lovers, dreamers, prophets and politicians call 'freedom'. — Diriye Osman

I wanted to hug them all. We belonged to each other somehow...But that sweet feeling hung on and I loved all of Harlem gently and didn't want to be Puerto Rican or anything else but my own rusty self. — Louise Meriwether

If these walls could talk, the buildings would stutter, wouldn't remember their names. — NoViolet Bulawayo

like many families, everyone wandered around like children in a funhouse - they could hardly see one another around the corners, and what they could see was completely distorted. — James Hannaham

I read mostly Irish, African, Japanese, South American, and African writers. You can count on Scandinavian literature for a certain kind of darkness, a modern mythic style. — Chris Abani

Now when the men talk, their voices burn in the air, making smoke all over the place. We hear about change, about new country, about democracy, about elections and what-what.
They talk and talk, the men, lick their lips and look at the dead watches on their wrists and shake their hands and slap each other and laugh like they have swallowed thunder. — NoViolet Bulawayo

As a student in England, I studied French and English literature. I read L'Etranger and the rhythm of the novel felt familiar to me - very African. — Sefi Atta

Big Ma didn't need to say any more and she didn't. T.J. was far from her favorite person and it was quite obvious that Stacey and I owed our good fortune entirely to T.J.'s obnoxious personality. — Mildred D. Taylor

Christopher's heart bled that night and he could not sleep. Deborah who used to call him numerous times in a day and send countless messages was now not answering his calls. And she never called him. — Ayibu Makolo

At Harvard I was taking an African-American studies class, and we were reading about the tragic mulatto. Invariably, the tragic mulatto can't fit in either world and flings herself off a bridge. So I'm reading, and I'm like, 'Oh, my God, I think I'm in literature,' but my life was never like that. — Soledad O'Brien

Melanin is the black pigment which permits skins to appear other than white (black, brown, red and yellow). Melanin pigment coloration is the norm for the hue-man family. If there are non-white readers who disagree with this presentation of white rejection of the white-skinned self, may I refer you to the literature on the currently developing sun-tanning parlors. — Frances Cress Welsing

The trick set me up. It's that simple. — Shadez

With literature, sometimes a book is presented in the media as being say, a Muslim story or an African story, when essentially it's a universal story which we can all relate to it, no matter what race or social background we come from. — Shawn Johnson

Clearly, she was enjoying herself to see that woman hurt. It was nothing she had desired. Nor did it seem as if she could control it, this inhuman sweet sensation to see another human being squirming. It hit her like a stone, the knowledge that there is pleasure in hurting. A strong three-dimensional pleasure, an exclusive masculine delight that is exhilarating beyond all measure. And this too is God's gift to man? She wondered. — Ama Ata Aidoo

In America we saw more food than we had seen in all our lives and we were so happy we rummaged through the dustbins of our souls to retrieve the stained, broken pieces of God. — NoViolet Bulawayo

They do not like to hear such expressions as "Negro literature," "Negro poetry," "African art," or "thinking black"; and, roughly speaking, we must concede that such things do not exist. These things did not figure in the courses which they pursued in school, and why should they? "Aren't we all Americans? Then, whatever is American is as much the heritage of the Negro as of any other group in — Carter G. Woodson

So she sat on the porch and watched the moon rise. Soon its amber fluid was drenching the earth, and quenching the thirst of the day. — Zora Neale Hurston

Writing has always been a serious business for me. I felt it was a moral obligation. A major concern of the time was the absence of the African voice. Being part of that dialogue meant not only sitting at the table but effectively telling the African story from an African perspective - in full earshot of the world. — Chinua Achebe

She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. — Zora Neale Hurston

What I can say is that it was clear to many of us that an indigenous African literary renaissance was overdue. A major objective was to challenge stereotypes, myths, and the image of ourselves and our continent, and to recast them through stories- prose, poetry, essays, and books for our children. That was my overall goal. — Chinua Achebe

You can handcuff my wrists, and Shackle my feet. You can bind me in chains, throw me in your deepest darkest dungeon...but you can't enslave my thinking...for it is free like the wind. — Jaye Swift

For us Africans, literature must serve a purpose: to expose, embarrass, and fight corruption and authoritarianism. It is understandable why the African artist is utilitarian. — Ama Ata Aidoo

Literature is indispensable to the world. The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way a person looks at reality, then you can change it. — James Baldwin

From all around the Third World,
You hear the same story;
Rulers
Asleep to all things at
All times -
Conscious only of
Riches, which they gather in a
Coma -
Intravenously
So that
You wouldn't know they were
Feeding if it was not for the
Occasional
Tell-tale trickle somewhere
Around the mouth.
And when they are jolted awake,
They stare about them with
Unseeing eyes, just
Sleepwalkers in a nightmare. — Ama Ata Aidoo

It was hard to love a woman that always made you feel so wishful. — Zora Neale Hurston

We're hungry but we're together and we're at home and everything is sweeter than dessert. — NoViolet Bulawayo

Maya Angelou, the famous African American poet, historian, and civil rights activist who is hailed be many as one of the great voices of contemporary literature, believes a struggle only makes a person stronger. — Michael N. Castle

South African literature is a literature in bondage. It is a less-than-fully-human literature. It is exactly the kind of literature you would expect people to write from prison. — J.M. Coetzee

I write to breath life back into memory to remind African-Americans of our rich and textured history. I also see myself as a "root," and for me the "fierce winds" include the marginalization-the downright segregation-of literature written by people of color. — Bernice L. McFadden

But how wonderful when the tale is told,
And the message that is meant for us
Opens like the scents of a mountain flower! — Mazisi Kunene

Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form. — Toni Morrison

We walked in wisdom with our shadows, in search of the dead part of ourselves, which would be our shelter. — Yvonne Vera

So often, literature about African people is conflated with literature about African politics, as if the state were somehow of greater import or interest than the individual. — Taiye Selasi

The moon twangs its silver strings;
The river swoons into town;
The wind beds down in the pines,
Covers itself with stars. — George Elliott Clarke

One had said, 'You say you come from Ghaanna? Then we have a lot in common!' Sissie didn't know what to do with the statement, uncertain of whether it was a threat or a promise.
'We had chiefs like you,' the Scot went on, 'who fought one another and all, while the Invader marched in.' Sissie thanked her, but also felt strongly that their kinship had better end right there. — Ama Ata Aidoo

Don't you think our society is designed to kill in that way? Of course, you've surely heard about those tiny fish in the rivers of Brazil which attack the swimmer by the thousands, eat him up in a few moments in quick little mouthfuls and leave only a perfectly clean skeleton behind? So, that's the way they're constituted. 'Do you want a clean life, like everyone else?' Of course the answer is yes. How could you not? 'Fine. We'll clean you up. Here's a job, here's a family, here's some organized leisure.' And the little teeth bite into the flesh, right down to the bone. But i'm being unfair. I shouldn't have said, 'the way they're constituted', because after all, it's our way, too: it's a case of who strips whom. — Albert Camus

In nude protests, the very same body that is objectified and subjected to endless scrutiny and policing is used to reclaim power. — Malebo Sephodi

Africa PRODUCES what it does NOT CONSUME and CONSUMES what it does NOT PRODUCE. — Ali A. Mazrui

He was a glance from God. — Zora Neale Hurston

In the early 1970s in Atlanta, I attended what had formerly been an all-white school but had become a black school after integration and white flight. Perhaps because of this, the teachers created a curriculum that included a focus on African American literature and history year-round, not just in February. — Natasha Trethewey

He began to stand around the gate and expect things. What things? She didn't know exactly. Her breath was gusty and short. She knew things that nobody ever told her. For instance, the words of the trees and the wind.. She knew the world was a stallion rolling in the blue pasture of ether. She knew that God tore down the old world every evening and built a new one by sun-up. It was wonderful to see it take form with the sun and emerge from the gray dust of its making. — Zora Neale Hurston

Literature doesn't have a country. Shakespeare is an African writer. His Falstaff, for example, is very African in his appetite for life, his largeness of spirit. The characters of Turgenev are ghetto dwellers. Dickens characters are Nigerians. — Ben Okri

Black children need to see their lives reflected in the books they read. If they don't, they won't feel welcome in the world of literature. The lives of African-Americans are rich and diverse, and the books our children read should reflect that. — Valerie Wilson Wesley

The problem was not an issue of availability because there were African girls everywhere. Christopher met them in church, in bars and in the cafeteria on the ground floor of the Sir Duncan Rice library. — Ayibu Makolo

I'm not interested in whether I'm better than you; only whether I'm better than yesterday. — Mike Ormsby

Education for women is something that has plagued the world for a very long time. When I saw this problem firsthand, I knew I had to write about it. — Sahndra Fon Dufe

The God of Imagination lived in fairytales. And the best fairytales made you fall in love. It was while flicking through "Sleeping Beauty" that I met my first love, Ivar. He was a six-year-old bello ragazzo with blond hair and eyebrows. He had bomb-blue eyes and his two front teeth were missing.
The road to Happily Ever After, however, was paved with political barbed wire. Three things stood in my way.
1. The object of my affection didn't know he was the object of my affection.
2. The object of my affection preferred Action Man to Princess Aurora.
3. The object of my affection was a boy and I wasn't allowed to love a boy. — Diriye Osman

A man is never ugly". — Buchi Emecheta

Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten. — Chinua Achebe

And that's the beginning of the primary conversation in African American literature, right there: the African descendant explaining to the European descendant about how white people's actions are affecting the lives of black people.* In — Mat Johnson

I read recently that the problem with stereotypes isn't that they are inaccurate, but that they're incomplete. And this captures perfectly what I think about contemporary African literature. The problem isn't that it's inaccurate, it's that it's incomplete. — Taiye Selasi

This book is dedicated to every woman who has ever felt self-conscious about her size. Outer beauty comes in all sizes, shapes, heights, ages, and colors. And inner beauty will always shine through, no matter what the packaging. — Raynetta Manees

The chaos of their voices registers as a single, overwhelming force cutting off her ability to reason, and all she wants is to get as far away from people as possible. — Zainab Omaki

He Said...

Your garden at dusk
Is the soul of love
Blurred in its beauty
And softly caressing;
I, gently daring
This sweetest confessing,
Say your garden at dusk
Is your soul, My Love. — Anne Spencer

And so the spirits just gazed at us with eyes milked dry of care. — NoViolet Bulawayo

Take the time to discover how African-Americans have had a great impact on this country. In science, education, literature, art, and politics. — Lynn Swann

The sky was overcast with thick, grey clouds drifting in the direction of Idasa. That meant rain. It would come, as long as the clouds drifted in that direction. Lightening flashes momentarily parted the clouds...Shango, the god of lightening and thunder, was registering his anger as this strange talk of a new God is taking hold of simple folk who were once unquestioning votaries of his order. The new malady must be nipped in the bud. — T.M. Aluko

There is indeed a great force in the world, a force spiritual and able to shape the physical universe, but that force is not something cut off, not something separate from ourselves. It is the energy in us, the strongest in our working, breathing, thinking together as one people; weakest when we are scattered, confused, broken into individual, unconnected fragments. — Ayi Kwei Armah

She spoke of those needing the white destroyers' shiny things to bring a feeling of worth into their lives, uttered their deep-rooted inferiority of soul, and called them lacking in the essence of humanity: womanhood in women, manhood in men. For which deficiency they must crave things to eke out their beings, things to fill holes in their spirits. — Ayi Kwei Armah

I know of no evil that ever existed, nor can imagine any evil to exist, worse than the tearing of seventy or eighty thousand persons every year from their own land. — William Pitt The Younger

The small Chinese man sank onto the plush leather sofa. He sank so low on the large brown sofa, it looked like it would swallow him whole. He sat, clutching his briefcase close to his chest, his alert eyes scanning the spacious room. Opposite him, across a glass table sat a large African Minister in a freshly pressed Italian suit. — Marko Phiri

They speak like melted butter and their children speak like footsteps on pavement ... — Isabel Wilkerson

Call them from their houses, and teach them to dream. — Jean Toomer

Honey, de white man is de ruler of everything as fur as Ah been able tuh find out. Maybe it's some place way off in de ocean where de black man is in power, but we don't know nothin' but what we see. — Zora Neale Hurston

In those sticky summer nights in South London our windows stay open and our tiny apartment becomes our secret garden. The magic of the secret garden is that it exists in our imagination. There are no limits, no borderlines. The secret garden leads to the marigolds of Mogadishu and the magnolias of Kingston and when the heat turns us sticky and sweet and unwilling to be claimed by defeat we own the night. We own our bodies. We own our lives. — Diriye Osman

Everybody black knows how to react to a tragedy. Just bring out a wheelbarrow full of the Same Old Anger, dump it all over the Usual Frustration, and water it with Somebody Oughtas, all of which Bethella did. Then quietly set some globs of Genuine Awe in a circle around the mixture, but don't call too much attention to that. Mention the Holy Spirit whenever possible. — James Hannaham

In school, I hated poetry - those skinny,
Malnourished poems that professors love;
The bad grammar and dirty words that catch
In the mouth like fishhooks, tear holes in speech.
Pablo, your words are rain I run through,
Grass I sleep in. — George Elliott Clarke

The feeling, all encompassing, safe and warm like a blanket permanently draped over her shoulders, follows her around. She takes it into the shower, to meals with her mother and sister, to work as she reads out the news script, her voice never faltering. — Zainab Omaki

There is no achievement gap at birth. — Lisa Delpit

I do not know if all cops are poets, but I know that all cops carry guns with triggers. — Ralph Ellison

Sissie could see it all. In her uncertain eyes, on her restless hands and on her lips, which she kept biting all the time.
But oh, her skin. It seemed as if according to the motion of her emotions Marija's skin kept switching on and switching off like a two-colour neon sign. So that watching her against the light of the dying summer sun, Sissie could not help thinking that it must be a pretty dangerous matter, being white. It made you feel awfully exposed, rendered you terribly vulnerable. Like being born without your skin or something. As though the Maker had fashioned the body of a human, stuffed it into a polythene bag instead of the regular protective covering, and turned it loose into the world.
Lord, she wondered, is that why, on the whole, they have had to be extra ferocious? Is it so they could feel safe here on the earth, under the sun, the moon and the stars? — Ama Ata Aidoo

I've always loved being gay. Sure, Kenya was not exactly Queer Nation but my sexuality gave me joy. I was young, not so dumb and full of cum! There was no place for me in heaven but I was content munching devil's pie here on earth. — Diriye Osman

The other thing about the Nights is that it is quite racist. One parentheses is that I think this is one of the negative things that appeal to people, that The Arabian Nights could be used as a disguise for racism. It suited the West. You could smuggle racism into children's literature, you see. The African magician in the story of Aladdin, he's labeled explicitly as the "African Magician." He's not a character but a stereotype, and a lot of this got into nursery literature in this Oriental disguise. — Marina Warner