All of the characters featured in Girl, Woman, Other are committed to making social change, but each varies in their approach. Broadly, the characters fall into two opposing attitudes. On the one hand are those who want to work within systems, believing that reforming the societal structures that already exist is the clearest path toward progress. On the other hand are the radicals who believe that dismantling society’s broken systems and creating something new in their place is the only path to real change. What the characters from both sides of this spectrum have in common is their judgment and scorn for those on the other side.
Amma and her friends like Dominique and Sylvester are all radicals in their early 20s. Although Amma scorns her friends who became less revolutionary as they settled into comfortable lives in middle age, her decision to take her play to the National Theatre, a revered social institution, is an act aligned with reformist values. Her play is supposed to make change from within, and it does. Sylvester, still committed to fighting from outside of institutions, chastises her for “selling out” and Amma starts to see his stubborn commitment to the revolutionary as immature. In fact, as the characters age, more and more of them abandon the radical ideologies that defined their 20s in exchange for a more conservative approach. Amma is one of the last holdouts of her generation, and as she starts to adopt a reformist approach, the next generation—which includes her daughter Yazz and Yazz’s peers, like Morgan—now carries the torch of radicalism and disparages its elders for being ignorant and out of touch. Characters like Roland, Carole, Shirley, and LaTisha all work within the system from the start. Differences in class, upbringing, and opportunities each play a role in their decisions to work as reformers.
What each character fails to recognize is what Slim, Hattie’s husband from Georgia, knows to be true. He admires both Malcolm X, who takes a radical approach, and Martin Luther King Jr., who takes a more reformist approach. He understands that both approaches are critical to the movement at a time when many felt compelled to take sides. Through characters’ mutual criticisms and Slim’s broad-minded insight, Girl, Woman, Other highlights the reality that social movements are as varied as the people within them, and that although this may seed division and derision, everyone plays a critical role in achieving progress and change. Furthermore, social movements are most effective when their advocates come together to defeat a common oppressor rather than succumb to internal judgment and scorn.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Radical vs. Reformist Social Movements ThemeTracker
Radical vs. Reformist Social Movements Quotes in Girl, Woman, Other
Amma then spent decades on the fringe, a renegade lobbing hand grenades at the establishment that excluded her
until the mainstream began to absorb what was once radical and she found herself hopeful of enjoying it
which only happened when the first female artistic director assumed the helm of the National three years ago
after so long hearing a polite no from her predecessors,
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
they decided they needed to start their own theatre company to have careers as actors, because neither was prepared to betray their politics to find jobs
or shut up to keep them
it seemed the obvious way forward
they scribbled ideas for names on hard toilet paper snaffled from the loo
Bush Women Theatre Company best captured their intentions
they would be a voice in theatre where there was silence
black and Asian women’s stories would get out there
they would create theatre on their own terms
it became the company’s motto
On Our Own Terms
or Not At All.
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
Shirley
was praised by the headmaster, Mr. Waverly, as a natural teacher, with an easy rapport with the children, who goes above and beyond the call of duty, achieves excellent exam results with her exemplary teaching skill and who is a credit to her people
in her first annual job assessment
Shirley felt the pressure was now on to be a great teacher and an ambassador
for every black person in the world
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
Megan wondered aloud how she could put her gender-free identity into practice when they were living in a gender-binary world, and that with so many definitions (sane and insane, she refrained from saying), the very idea of gender might eventually lose any meaning, who can remember them all? maybe that was the point, a completely gender-free world, or was that a naïve utopian dream?
Bibi replied that dreaming wasn’t naïve but essential for survival, dreaming was the equivalent of hoping on a large scale, utopias were an unachievable ideal by definition, and yeh, she really couldn’t see billions of people accepting the abolition of the idea of gender completely in her lifetime
Megan said in which case demanding gender-neutral pronouns for herself from people who’d no idea what she was going on about also seemed utopian
Bibi said it was a first step towards changing people’s minds, and although yes, like all radical movements, there’d be much resistance and Megan would have to be resilient
they both followed the news about the civil rights protests, Slim said the Negro needed Malcolm X and Martin Luther King
when they were assassinated within three years of each other
he disappeared into the hills for a few days
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
