“Privilege is about context and circumstance.”
Yazz and her friends are involved in contemporary discussions on topics like race, gender, and privilege. Yazz enters university cocksure about her lack of privilege as a black woman, but then she meets Courtney, a white woman who, though white, has grown up in poverty in rural England. Courtney, citing feminist theorist Roxanne Gay, argues that Yazz should stop "playing 'privilege Olympics'" and consider that "privilege is relative and contextual." Courtney essentially asks Yazz to consider contexts and circumstances outside of race and gender that could play a role in shaping one's access to opportunity, or privilege.
“Her friendship with Amma is based on historic loyalty and comfortable familiarity rather than shared interests and perspectives”
Amma has a large circle of artistic, flamboyant, queer, and edgy friends, but that was not always the case. In grammar school, Amma was somewhat more withdrawn, and as the only two black girls at the school, Shirley and Amma were drawn to each other. Though Amma quickly became outspoken, eccentric, and openly gay, Shirley remained shy and more conservative. The lives of these two childhood best friends diverge after grammar school, with Amma going down a nontraditional path working in theater and having strings of lovers, and Shirley going down a sensible, more traditional path as a schoolteacher who quickly marries a responsible man. Even so, out of loyalty to a shared past, the two remain friends. Many sorts of friendships exist between the characters in this novel, and this quote highlights one sort of friendship, based not on the present, but the past—on "historic loyalty" and "familiarity" rather than active enjoyment of present company.
"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"
Joseph says this to Grace as he makes love to her. Since Grace's father was Abyssinian/Ethiopian, she is half black. Her husband, who seems to have a penchant for darker-skinned women, and especially women from Egypt (where the "Nile" is), thinks of her as his gateway to Egypt. Unfortunately, as Grace corrects him, she is not of Egyptian but rather Ethiopian descent. In fact, though Grace repeatedly tells her husband that she is Abyssinian rather than Egyptian, he continues to refer to her as "Queen of the Nile" and "Cleopatra," especially during sexual acts like this. Joseph's behavior seems to reflect an exoticized, perhaps even fetishized, view towards his half-black wife.
Penelope wanted to embrace self-love and self-acceptance / getting rid of the full-length mirrors in her home was a good start.
In the midst of middle age and two failed marriages, Penelope no longer feels desired or beautiful. In fact, she actively feels ugly, unhappy, unshapely, and most of all, lonely. She recognizes that contemporary movements on self-love and self-acceptance could help her move past her discontent—perhaps if she could just accept the way her body looks now, perhaps if she could just love herself enough to live in the world alone, she would be happier. Though she accepts these tenets in theory, she does not put them into practice because, ironically, she chooses to get rid of all the full-length mirrors in her home. That is, rather than accept the way that her body looks, she chooses to ignore it, quite a different action altogether.
"if it was twenty years later, Rachel, I'd have left him there and then / if it had been thirty years later, I'd have lived with him before marrying him, you see it occurred to me that I didn't really know this man who wanted me to follow him around like a mindless idiot."
Winsome shows her granddaughter Rachel just how different times are now than they were when she was a young adult. Referring to her choosing to marry her husband, Clovis, Winsome recounts that she was not equipped to choose her husband the way she would have been if she were born twenty years later, in Shirley's generation. She claims that when she was young, she had to follow her husband "around like a mindless idiot," but that if she were living in more liberal times, she surely would have either left Clovis or at least tried cohabitating with him before marrying.
Neil Armstrong walks on the moon with the caption: one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind / like her / every step she takes will raise these children up, she will leave no child behind
When Shirley begins teaching at Peckham, she is filled with a grandiose and idealistic mission: to uplift every single one of the working-class children at her school. She envisions herself like Neil Armstrong, improving the world every day, one child at a time. This idealism of young Shirley is eventually eroded away by changes to the British education system, which leave her cynical, mean, and overly strict.
"dear Augustine, who died of a heart attack while driving over Westminster Bridge transporting drunken partygoers in the early hours of New Year's Day / after too many unbroken nights with junk food on the go / doubling his salary in the busiest period of the year while halving his already unknowingly, genetically, chronically heart-diseased life"
Bummi recalls the death of her husband, Augustine, in the passage above. While he held a Ph.D. in Economics from a Nigerian university, he was relegated to driving cabs and eating fast food after immigrating to the UK. To support his family, according to Bummi, he would work night shifts for the better money it paid, and in order to maximize profits, would not stop to have proper meals. Instead, he would buy fast food—quickly prepared and quickly consumed—so that he could get back to work and continue making money. Unfortunately, this relentless chase to support his family ended up becoming fatal, cutting Augustine's life short, and leaving Bummi to take care of Carole on her own.
[Bummi] decided there was no great spiritual being watching over her, protecting her and the people she loved...the space once occupied by God was now hollow, and with no god to promise everlasting salvation, it hit her hard how much she was on her own.
The name Augustine carries a reference to Saint Augustine, the North African bishop who chronicled his personal path to finding faith in the face of struggle. Bummi's husband is likened to this saint—and indeed, Bummi's recollection of Augustine does paint him in a saintly manner. Crucially, however, when Bummi sees her husband's dead body, she loses her faith. Losing the saint in her life causes her to lose her faith, and leaves her with an emptiness in her heart.
"[Margaret] had been born in the newly created Union of South Africa after her English parents sold up their failing barley farm at Hutton Conyers in Yorkshire to take advantage of the Natives Land Act of 1913 / which allocated over 80% of land ownership to the only people capable of looking after it, her mother told her / the white race"
Penelope's mother, Margaret, is considered by her daughter to be an incredible "dullard," though with an interesting upbringing. Part of this upbringing, likely in the late 1910s to early 1920s in South Africa, involved a deeply help belief in the superiority of white people, who were, according to Margaret, rightfully allowed to wrest land from the natives as the "only people capable of looking after it." This belief propelled and justified government colonial action, like the Natives Land Act of 1913, and individual colonial and discriminatory action on the part of British citizens like Margaret's parents.
"Megan was part Ethiopian, part African-American, part Malawian, and part English / which felt weird when you broke it down like that because essentially she was just a complete human being / most people assumed she was mixed-race, it was easier to let them think it"
Megan/Morgan's ancestors have come from different parts of Africa and Europe, leaving her to be, according to those around her, "a mixed kid." However, Morgan themself disagrees with this characterization of who they are—rather than being disparate parts chunked together into one, Morgan thinks of their own identity as one undivided whole.
