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Kwabena
Helen is Amma’s mother and Kwabena’s wife. Born in 1935, Helen is biracial and faced intense racism growing up in a small, Scottish city. She escapes to London where she meets and eventually marries Kwabena. Helen worked a full-time job while maintaining sole responsibility for the household chores and childcare. Amma thinks her mother is oppressed and unfulfilled and lacks the feminist insight to stand up for herself.
Helen Quotes in Girl, Woman, Other
The Girl, Woman, Other quotes below are all either spoken by Helen or refer to Helen. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 1: Amma
Quotes
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
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Explanation and Analysis:
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Helen Quotes in Girl, Woman, Other
The Girl, Woman, Other quotes below are all either spoken by Helen or refer to Helen. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 1: Amma
Quotes
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
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
