Women Authors

"I always need to be anchored in such a way that I am inside a character."

"Time is as necessary for remembering as it is for forgetting. Even the smallest embrace of pain needs time larger than a pause; the greatest pause requires an eternity, the greatest hurt a lifetime. A lifetime is longer than eternity: an eternity can exist without human presence."

"If speaking is still difficult to negotiate, then writing has created a free space for most women -much freer than speech. The book is bound, circulated, read. It retains its autonomy much more than a woman is allowed in the oral situation."

"How can words be made still [in writing], without turning into silence? Silence is more to be feared than the agitation of voices."

"Nehanda came out of me like a dream. It has the feeling of a dream when I look at it now. And that suited it, because it concerned a myth, a legend. It was a story of spirituality, of ancestors, a mystic consciousness and a history ... so it was much better to write it almost intuitively, out of my consciousness of being an African, as though I were myself a spirit medium, and I was just transferring or conveying the feelings, symbols and images of that. I wrote it at a time when I could write it, the way one might write a folk-song... I wrote it from remembrance, as a witness to my own spiritual history."

"Our people know the power of words. It is because of this that they desire to have words continuously spoken and kept alive. We do not believe that words can become independent of the speech that bore them, of the humans who controlled and gave birth to them. [... ] The paper is the stranger’s own peculiar custom. Among ourselves, speech is not like the rock. Words cannot be taken from the people who create them. People are their words."

"The dare was a large clearing in the center of the village. Those who were admitted to the dare knew the power of words. The midwife was also among the shapers of wisdom, who determined the future of the village."

"I doubt that the natives can listen to an old woman like her. What can she tell them? This society has no respect for women, whom they treat like children. A woman has nothing to say in the life of the natives. Nothing at all."

"She cried, and the women sang her back to sleep, willing a silence onto her. She defied them with her tiny speech-seeking voice and cried all day and all night until her mother fell asleep."

"I must be in touch with the earth. I can never mistake the source of inspiration and energy to be gender, it is something we all share. It is true, however, that one best writes on themes, feelings, and sentiments one is more closely connected with. In this regard I like to think that I am writing. I am a woman. I am writing."

"I am inspired by successful women who do things that were previously only done by men; women who can create and succeed and who are confident."

"Quite often, my advice has been on using power of pen not guns to fight ones right."

"I am so much enmeshed in my Luo family and community I am not afraid of writing from within it either."

"...when the seed of a curse finds fertile ground in a human mind, it spreads with the destructive speed of a creeping plant. And while it does, it nurtures superstition, which in turn, eats into all reasoning abilities and the capability of facing responsibility"

"...the nurturing of another prospective soul into the devouring jaws of the street, a life brought forth for the sake of bringing forth"

"Before I went there, I knew by all means she would give me food. But this woman gave me more. She hugged me. I was dirty. I smelled bad. But she hugged me...Sometimes I wish to be hugged even if I am smelling of the streets"

"Girls are pressurized to prove their womanhood whether they can adequately care for a child or not. You know the popular saying, don't you? 'You give birth. God will take care of the child' "."

"I have decided to stop thinking about ever going home. I just don’t belong there any longer."

"Your life is your road, Mara. God puts you at the start of this road and propels you to walk on, and only He knows where your road will end, but it is the road He choose for you and you must walk it with gratefulness because it’s the best for you."

"After all, I was also party to it all even if involuntarily. And I guess that my punishment for it is that I am stuck with Oves for the rest of my life. I have decided to stop thinking about ever going home. I just don’t belong there any longer."

"My husband brings me from home to a foreign land and puts me in a brothel to work, and what money I make, he uses to pay the rent on his lover’s apartment, to renovate a house for her in village back home. I came to Gerhardt expecting the worst, but this was even worse than I had conceived of."

"You were green then, Mara. Totally green. And I was also in love with Osey then. And I did what Osey ordered me to do. I was his property then, Mara. I love him. Mara. I really did."

"Why couldn’t I take control of my own life, since after all, I was virtually husbandless and, what did my husband care about a woman’s virtue? If I was sleeping with men and charging them for it, it was me giving myself to them. The body being used and misused belonged to me."

"At first I didn’t understand, because here, we hear always that African people are hard workers and love work because God made them specially for the hard work of the world…"

"I had already worked out, long before, that Marjorie was an exceptional human being and, consequently, I contrived to record as much about her as I could, for posterity."

".....Akobi beat me a lot at home, yes, but somehow I identified beatings like this with home. That African men also beat their wives in Europe somehow didn’t fit into my glorious picture of European life."

"He was lying on the mattress, face up, looking thoughtfully at the ceiling when I entered. Cool, composed and authoritative, he indicated with a pat of his hand on the space beside him that I should lie down beside him. I did so, more out of apprehension of starting another fight than anything else. Wordlessly, he stripped off my clothes, stripped off his trousers, turned my back to him and entered me. Then he ordered me off the mattress to go and lay on my mat because he wanted to sleep alone."

"what African man gets angry because his wife was carrying a baby? And the first baby at that."

"… this ministries man, he is not only a bad man and bad husband, he has also got something inside his head. I only hope that he won’t destroy you with it before you too start seeing red with your eyes like I do."

"Muthoni Likimani belongs to a group of unsung heroines, more so because she penned her works from the heart, exuding a fighting spirit that epitomises her historical role as a freedom fighter and chronicler of a peoples’ culture and livelihood. Her natural smile radiates the warmth of the connection her fictional characters have with the audience. Indeed, as I read her works I see that radiance of a gallant personality to read more, hear more and see more."

"Throughout my life's journey as a strong woman, I have enjoyed the support of many. At the same time, I have suffered because I am a woman. I never forget that after being declared the best creative writer and best producer at Voice of Kenya, I was not recommended for promotion. Another person was appointed above me and I was expected to be his assistant."

"I have no fear. True, I fear God, but I do not fear what people will say. My success has been driven by my confidence and lack of fear. I believe that I can do what others can."

"If you do not have confidence you might as well be dead."

"Racism is a phenomenal thing; it is like a thick mist that obscures the vision and judgment of even great minds."

"African women especially young ones have been silent foe so long. We are the discussed,the studied,the analysed and the written about. And I am so privileged to have been able to raise my voice and speak for what we felt and cried and yearned."

"She is a public speaker who has been invited to lecture at various colleges and universities across the USA and spoken to numerous book clubs and civic organisations and served on many literary panels including being an invited guest of The Gotenberg Literary Festival."

"She is a founder of cutting Edge Neurosurgeon Inc., a web based start up."

"Until the lion learns to write tales of hunting, we'll always glorify the hunter"

"I saw the world as vast and magical with so many cultures and people. It opened me up and made me very adaptable to change. It also meant that I was not afraid to be in strange places, to experience and to learn."

"I strongly believe that animals are a crucial part in a human's life; we need other companions besides our fellow humans to share joyous, sad and emotional moments. Pets just always seem to be the unsurpassed friend and the best listeners."

"Look at the children of the land leaving in droves, leaving their own land with bleeding wounds on their bodies and shock on their faces and blood in their hearts and hunger in their stomachs and grief in their footsteps. Leaving their mothers and fathers and children behind, leaving their umbilical cords underneath the soil, leaving the bones of their ancestors in the earth, leaving everything that makes them who and what they are, leaving because it is no longer possible to stay. They will never be the same again because you cannot be the same once you leave behind who and what you are, you just cannot be the same."

"NoViolet Bulawayo has created a world that lives and breathes – and fights, kicks, screams, and scratches, too. She has clothed it in words and given it a voice at once dissonant and melodic, utterly distinct.""

"“I used to be very afraid of graveyards and death and such things, but not anymore. There is just no sense of being afraid when you live so near the graves; it would be like the tongue fearing the teeth.”"

"“I think the reason they are my relatives now is they are from my country too - it's like the country has become a real family since we are in America, which is not our country.”"

"“We're hungry but we're together and we're at home and everything is sweeter than dessert.”"

"“If Messenger would be to open his mouth right now, his voice would be a terrible wound.”"

"“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."

"“...and the women spread their ntsaroz and sit on one side, the men on the other, like they are two different rivers that are not supposed to meet.”"

"“Aunt Fostalina says when she first came to America she went to school during the day and worked nights at Eliot’s hotels, cleaning hotel rooms together with people from countries like Senegal, Cameroon, Tibet, the Philippines, Ethiopia, and so on. It was like the damn United Nations there, she likes to say.”"

"“Further and further we go, and the sun keeps ironing us and ironing us and ironing us.”"