105
" bugs me are the trans troublemakers, you should have seen the stick I got when I announced my festival was for women-born-women as opposed to women-born-men, I was accused of being transphobic, which I’m not, I’m absolutely not, I have trans friends, but there is a difference, a man raised as a man might not feel like one but he’s been treated as one by the world, so how can he be exactly the same as us? "
― Bernardine Evaristo , Girl, Woman, Other
111
" that night she dreamed of employing an army of women cleaners who would set forth across the planet on a mission to clean up all the damage done to the environment
they came from all over Africa and from North and South and South America, they came from India and China and all over Asia, they came from Europe and the Middle East, from Oceania, and from the Antarctic, too
she imagined them all descending in their millions on the Niger Delta and driving out the oil companies with their mop and broom handles transformed into spears and poison-tipped swords and machine guns
she imagined them demolishing al the equipment used for oil production, including the flare stacks that rose into the skies to burn the natural gas, her cleaners setting charges underneath each one, detonating from a safe distance and watching them being blown up
she imagined the local people cheering and celebrating with dancing, drumming and roasted fish
she imagined the international media filming it- CNN, BBC, NBC
she imagined the government unable to mobilize the poorly paid local militia because they were terrified by the sheer numbers of her Worldwide Army of Women Cleaners
who could vaporize them with their superhuman powers
afterwards, she imagined legions of singing women sifting the rivers and creeks to remove the thick slicks of grease that had polluted them and digging up the land until they'd removed the toxic sublayers of soil
she imagined the skies opening when the job was fone and the pouring of pure water from the now hygienic clouds for as long as it took for the region to be thoroughly cleansed and replenished "
― Bernardine Evaristo , Girl, Woman, Other
116
" the thing is, if she and her father are going to have a healthy relationship into the future, it’s up to her to keep him in check because no one else is going to do it, he surrounds himself with what Mum calls his ‘court sycophants’, the people Yazz meets at his parties, mainly famous white people off the telly who see him as an honorary one of them she’s almost got there with Mum, although it was a hard slog, especially when she was fourteen or fifteen and Mum was prone to hysteria when she didn’t get her own way now she knows better than to try to control or contradict her daughter all Yazz needs to say these days is, don’t sass me, Mumsy! and she shuts up Dad’s on that learning curve too he’ll thank her in the end "
― Bernardine Evaristo , Girl, Woman, Other
