Girl, Woman, Other is a deeply complex novel with both direct and subtle connections at every turn. The characters are related in intricate ways that are often unknown to the characters themselves and to readers, who only gradually discover the extent of these connections as the novel unfolds. In this way, the structure of Evaristo’s novel underlies one of its central messages about the intersectional nature of human lives and social movements. Each character is strong and assured in their beliefs, often asserting that their view of the world is the only correct one. Perhaps because of these uncompromising beliefs, each character contradicts themselves at every turn. For example, Amma and her group of radical friends profess a commitment to changing the world for the marginalized. At the same time, they look down on those like Carole, who take a more mainstream approach to social change, without recognizing the different social factors that led Carole down this path. Carole’s class background (she grew up with a poor, single, immigrant mother in a struggling community) is different than Amma’s upbringing, which afforded her more class privilege and exposed her to radical ideas.
Yazz provides another example when she plays what writer and social commentator Roxane Gay calls “the privilege Olympics.” She’s constantly ranking her friends from most to least oppressed. She not only fails to see the ways in which different factors, such as race, gender, class, sexuality, intersect to complicate the simple picture she tries to paint, but she also contradicts her own professed social beliefs by putting Waris, who she sees as her “most oppressed” friend, on a pedestal that victimizes her in just the way that Waris has asked Yazz not to. Roxane Gay’s criticism of the way we talk about oppression and difference runs throughout Evaristo’s novel. Courtney paraphrases Gay’s claim in her book Bad Feminist that “we should be able to say, ‘This is my truth,’ and have that truth stand without a hundred clamoring voices shouting, giving the impression that multiple truths cannot coexist.” Each chapter of Girl, Woman, Other contains those hundreds of “clamoring voices” that assert themselves while tearing down others. Amma’s play, which is only one truth and one story about Black women, brings the characters together with all their differences, but where those difference intersect and connect. The after-party is a space where all their truths exist simultaneously and thus represents Evaristo’s assertion that the future must be one where individuals come together to acknowledge that all oppression is intersectional.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Contradiction, Complexity, and Intersectionality ThemeTracker
Contradiction, Complexity, and Intersectionality Quotes in Girl, Woman, Other
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 to patronize me
she surprised herself at the strength of her grief
she then regretted never telling him she loved him, he was her father, a good man, of course she loved him, she knew that now he was gone, he was a patriarch but her mother was right when she said, he’s of his time and culture, Amma
my father was devastated at having to fell Ghana so abruptly, she eulogized at his memorial, attended by his elderly socialist comrades
it must have been so traumatic, to lose his home, his family, his friends, his culture, his first language, and to come to a country that didn’t want him
once he had children, he wanted us educated in England and that was it
my father believed in the higher purpose of left-wing politics and actively worked to make the world a better place
she didn’t tell them she’d taken her father for granted and carried her blinkered, self-righteous perspective of him from childhood through to his death, when in fact he’d done nothing wrong except fail to live up to her feminist expectations of him
you’ve really suffered, Yazz says, I feel sorry for you, not in a patronizing way, it’s empathy, actually
I haven’t suffered, not really, my mother and grandmother suffered because they lost their loved ones and their homeland, whereas my suffering is mainly in my head
it’s not in your head when people deliberately barge into you
it is compared to half a million people who died in the Somali civil war, I was born here and I’m going to succeed in this country, I can’t afford not to work my butt off, I know it’s going to be tough when I get on the job market but you know what, Yazz? I’m not a victim, don’t ever treat me like a victim, my mother didn’t raise me to be a victim.
yes but I’m black, Courts, which makes me more oppressed than anyone who isn’t, except Waris who is the most oppressed of all of them (although I don’t tell her that)
in five categories: black, Muslim, female, poor, hijabbed
she’s the only one Yazz can’t tell to check her privilege
Courtney replied that Roxane Gay warned against the idea of playing ‘privilege Olympics’ and wrote in Bad Feminist that privilege is relative and contextual, and I agree, Yazz, I mean where does it all end? is Obama less privileged than a white hillbilly growing up in a trailer park with a junkie single mother and a jailbird father? Is a severely disabled person more privileged than a Syrian asylum-seeker who’s been tortured? Roxane argues that we have to find a new discourse for discussing inequality
Yazz doesn’t know what to say, when did Court read Roxane Gay – who’s amaaaazing?
was this a student outwitting the master moment?
#whitegirltrumpsblackgirl
Nzinga had suggested that her relationship history of blonde girlfriends might be a sign of self-loathing; you have to ask yourself if you’ve been brainwashed by the white beauty ideal, sister, you have to work a lot harder on your black feminist politics, you know
Dominique wondered if she had a point, why did she go for stereotypical blondes? Amma had teased her about it without judging her, she herself was a product of various mixtures and often had partners of all colors
in contrast, Nzinga had grown up in the segregated South, although shouldn’t that make her pro-integration rather than against it?
Dominique wondered if she really was still being brainwashed by white society, and whether she really was failing at the identity she most cherished – the black feminist one
why did Nzinga think being in love with her meant she had to give up her independence and submit completely?
wasn’t that being like a male chauvinist?
Dominique felt like an altered version of herself after a while, her mind foggy, emotions primal, senses heightened
she enjoyed the sex and affection – outside in the fields when summer arrived, wantonly naked in the heat, unworried about anyone coming across them, what Nzinga called Dominique’s sexual healing, as if she’d been suffering terribly when she met her
Dominique let it pass
she wanted to talk this through with friends, Amma most of all, or the women at Spirit Moon, she needed a sounding board, it wasn’t going to happen, Nzinga kept them at a distance, kicked up a fuss when Dominique made overtures of friendship
did me and Papa come to this country for a better life only to see our daughter giving up on her opportunities and end up distributing paper hand towels for tips in nightclub toilets or concert venues, as is the fate of too many of our countrywomen?
you must go back to this university in January and stop thinking everybody hates you without giving them a chance, did you even ask them? did you go up to them and say, excuse me, do you hate me?
you must find the people who will want to be your friends even if they are all white people
there is someone for everyone in this world
you must go back and fight the battles that are your British birthright, Carole, as a true Nigerian
Carole amended herself to become not quite them, just a little more like them
she scraped off the concrete foundation plastered on to her face, removed the giraffe-esque eyelashes that weighed down her eyelids, ripped off the glued-on talons that made most daily activities difficult
such as getting dressed, picking things up, most food preparation and using toilet paper
she ditched the weaves sewn into her scalp for months at a time, many months longer than advised because, having saved up to wear the expensive black tresses of women from India or Brazil, she wanted her money’s worth, even when her scalp festered underneath the stinky patch of cloth from which her fake hair flowed
she felt freed when it was unstitched for the very last time, and her scalp made contact with air.
She felt the deliciousness of warm water running directly over it again without the intermediary of a man-made fabric
She then had her tight curls straightened, Marcus said he preferred her hair natural, she told him she’d never get a job if she did that
when Shirley drove up to the school in the mornings
moments before the inmates charged up the Paupers’ Path to destroy any sense of equilibrium
its monstrous proportions settled in her stomach
like concrete
and as the eighties became history the nineties couldn’t wait to charge in and bring more problems than solutions
more children at school coming from families struggling to cope
more unemployment, poverty, addiction, domestic violence at home
more kids with parents who were ‘inside,’ or should have been
more kids who needed free school meals
more kids who were on the Social Services register or radar
more kids who went feral – (she wasn’t an animal tamer)
at first she’d enjoyed teaching the disadvantaged children of the area whose parents had an inter-generational history of paying taxes in this country, even though she knew most of them wouldn’t go on to great things
a supermarket till for the ones who were numerate, a typing pool for those who were numerate and literate, further education for those who could pass exams sufficiently well
she felt a sense of responsibility towards her own kind, and didn’t like it at all when the school’s demography began to change with the immigrants and their offspring pouring in
in the space of a decade the school went from predominately English children of the working classes to a multicultural zoo of kids coming from countries where there weren’t even words for please and thank you
which explained a lot
she loathed that feminism was on the descent, and the vociferous multi-culti brigade was on the ascent, and felt angry all the time, usually at the older boys who were disrespectful and the bullish male teachers who still behaved as if they owned the planet
…
Shirley was barely out of her teaching probation when she took a pot shot at Penelope at that staff meeting all those years ago – at the only woman in the school who dared stand up to the men
why didn’t Saint Shirley attack one of the male chauvinist pigs who pontificated ad infinitum instead of a strong woman who’d brought petitions into work for both the Equal Pay Act and the Sex Discrimination Act, both of which were eventually passed into law
improving the situation for all working women
she should be admired and respected by her female colleagues
Hattie asked him to tone it down with the stories, it was scaring their children and would make them hate themselves, he said they needed to toughen up and what did she know about it with her being high-yaller and living in the back of beyond?
you liked that I’m high-yaller, as you put it, so don’t you go using it against me, Slim
he said the Negro had reason to be angry, having spent four hundred years in American enslaved, victimized and kept downtrodden
it was a powder keg waiting to explode
she replied they were a million miles from America and it’s different here, Slim, not perfect but better
he said his little brother Sonny was the children’s uncle and they needed to know what happened to him and about the history of a country that allowed him to be murdered, and it’s our duty to face up to racial issues, Hattie, because our children are darker than you and aren’t going to have it as easy
after Joseph died, Slim broke open an old library cabinet when he couldn’t find the keys, said that as the man of the house he needed to know what was in it
he found old ledgers that recorded the captain’s lucrative business as a slave runner, exchanging slaves from Africa for sugar in the West Indies
came charging like a lunatic into the kitchen where she was cooking and had a go at her for keeping such a wicked family secret from him
she didn’t know, she told him, was as upset as he was, the cabinet had been locked her entire life, her father told her important documents were inside and never go near it
she calmed Slim down, they talked it through
it’s not me or my Pa who’s personally responsible, Slim, she said, trying to mollify her husband, no you co-own the spoils with me
she wrapped her long arms around his waist from behind
it’s come full circle, hasn’t it?
it was so odd seeing a stage full of black women tonight, all of them as dark or darker than her, a first, although rather than feel validated, she felt slightly embarrassed
if only the play was about the first black woman prime minister of Britain, or a Nobel prize-winner for science, or a self-made billionaire, someone who represented legitimate success at the highest levels, instead of lesbian warriors strutting around and falling for each other
during the interval at the bar she noticed a few members of the white audience looking at her different from when they’d all arrived in the lobby earlier, much more friendly, as if she was somehow reflected in the play they were watching and because they approved of the play, they approved of her
there were also more black women in the audience than she’d seen at any other play at the National
at the interval she studied them with their extravagant head-ties, chunky earrings the size of African sculptures, voodoo-type necklaces of beads, bones, leather pouches containing spells (probably), metal bangles as thick as wrist weights, silver rings so large their wingspan spread over several fingers
she kept getting the black sisterhood nod, as if the play somehow connected them together
this metal-haired wild creature from the bush with the piercingly feral eyes
is her mother
this is she
this is her
who cares about her colour? why on earth did Penelope ever think it mattered?
in this moment she’s feeling something so pure and primal it’s overwhelming
they are mother and daughter and their whole sense of themselves is recalibrating
her mother is now close enough to touch
Penelope had worried she would feel nothing, or that her mother would show no love for her, no feelings, no affection
how wrong she was, both of them are welling up and it’s like the years are swiftly regressing until the lifetimes between them no longer exist
this is not about feeling something or about speaking words
this is about being
together
