Maxine Beneba Clarke > Quotes

“In this country, you look at a person, and you know them. It is the inside-out way the people of this country wear their soul. In their eyes you can find civilisations of honesty or sweeping fields of lies. It's taken some getting used to but now Asanka likes it - this casual unguardedness that comes from never really knowing fear.”
― Maxine Beneba Clarke, Foreign Soil

“I learned to stay quiet. I learned that nobody much cared. I learned that it was probably my fault anyway, and that what they were doing to me was perfectly okay. This is how it alters us. This is how we change.”
― Maxine Beneba Clarke, The Hate Race

“Foreign Soil is dedicated to Australian fiction writers of colour: those who paved the path before me, and those for whom these clumsy feet will hopefully help smooth the way.”
― Maxine Beneba Clarke, Foreign Soil

“You tell a teacher someone is calling you names. Blackie. Monkey girl. Golliwog. The teacher stares at you, exasperated, as if to say: Do you really expect me to do something about it? The next time you have a grievance, you look for a different teacher.”
― Maxine Beneba Clarke, The Hate Race

“If racism is a shortcoming of the heart, then experiencing it is an assault on the mind.”
― Maxine Beneba Clarke, The Hate Race

“As far as anyone knew, Australia was some bottom-of-the-earth island that had banned black folk from coming in for as long as possible, after shooting dead most of the ones they found there in the first place.”
― Maxine Beneba Clarke, The Hate Race

“Racist.The word felt strange in my mouth:powerful,as if now that I could name the thing that was happening to me,it had become real,not something I was imagining or being oversensitive about.”
― Maxine Beneba Clark

“THE STILT FISHERMEN OF KATHALUWA”
― Maxine Beneba Clarke, Foreign Soil

“Millie was a dreamer, with the city in her sights”
― Maxine Beneba Clarke, Foreign Soil