Love and sexuality run through the heart of the 12 narratives that make up Girl, Woman, Other, and each of the women’s stories explores the myriad ways that love intersects with racial and ethnic identity. The pressure to fall in love with someone from one’s own racial or ethnic group is present in many of the women’s lives. Carole’s mother, Bummi, is devastated when her daughter falls in love with a white, English man instead of a Nigerian. For Bummi, this decision threatens to further erode Carole’s Nigerian identity, which Carole has already suppressed in order to assimilate—the only clear path Carole saw to achieve success in a discriminatory English society. Amma is a radical, activist lesbian who is proud of her “multicultural hoedom,” but ends up with two white women life partners. Dominique always dated blondes in her 20s, which a girlfriend later suggests is a product of her internalized racism. Falling in love with someone white also means facing those lovers’ racist families. Carole’s husband, Freddy, is excited to see his parents’ reaction when he brings home a Black woman, as if she’s a token he’s entitled to use to make a political statement to his family. When Julie, descended from an Ethiopian great-grandfather and African American grandfather, marries a man from Malawi, her family is angry with her for “ruining” the family line which becomes “whiter with every generation.” This desire itself is one rooted in their internalized racism, born of the traumas of growing up amidst the racism of the English countryside. Almost all the women the book features have experienced colorism and have either been sexually objectified or ignored because of their race. In this way, the characters’ stories highlight the relationship between love, sexuality, and racial and cultural identities, as well as how living in a racist, Western society complicates interracial love and desire.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Love, Sexuality, and Race ThemeTracker
Love, Sexuality, and Race Quotes in Girl, Woman, Other
Yazz noticed that those ‘buns’ reciprocated Courtney’s attention, her creamy softness pouring ostentatiously over the top of her denim blouse
they stared at Courtney, not at Yazz, who wasn’t the one getting checked out as usual, and she usually got checked out a lot
not that she’s interested in the kind of male who belts their trousers underneath their bum
today it’s all about Courtney, who’s not even particularly hot and it’s like Yazz is invisible and her friend is an irresistible goddess
a white girl walking with a black girl is always seen as black-man-friendly
Yazz has been here before with other white mates
it makes her feel so
jaded
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
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
Freddy arranged for Bummi to meet his parents in a London restaurant, which she was looking forward to
except he warned her that although they’d warmed to the idea of Carole, once they saw how classy, well-spoken and successful she was (most importantly for his mother, how slim and pretty, too)
they’re still old-fashioned snobs
Freddy’s father, Mark, looked uncomfortable, said little at the dinner, Carole sat there with a fake smile plastered on her face the whole time
Pamela, his mother, smiled at Bummi as if she was a famine victim, when she started explaining the meaning of hors d’oeuvres to her, Freddy told her to stop it, Mommy, just stop it
Ada Mae married Tommy, the first man who asked, grateful anyone would
she didn’t exactly have suitors lining up in Newcastle wanting to proudly introduce their black girlfriend to their parents in the nineteen-sixties
Tommy was on the ugly side, a face like a garden gnome, her and Slim joked, none too bright, either
Hattie suspected the lad didn’t have too many choices himself
a coalminer from young, he was apprenticed as a welder when the mines were shut down
he proved to be a good husband and really did love Ada Mae, in spite of her colour
as he told Hattie and Slim when he came to ask for her hand
lucky that Slim didn’t lay him out
there and then
Sonny’s experience was somewhat different, according to Ada Mae who reported back that women queued up round the block for him
they thought he was the next best thing to dating Johnny Mathis
he married Janet, a barmaid, whose parents objected
and told her to choose
nights
they made love with the gas lamp dimmed
she was his expedition into Africa, he said, he was Dr Livingstone sailing downriver in Africa to discover her at the source of the Nile
Abyssinia, she corrected him
whatever you say, Gracie
