Our Shared Shelf discussion

Which quote or scene from Girl Woman Other left an impression (good or bad)? Share your favorite quote or scene here as well as what it means to you.

To me Girl, Woman, Other is a masterpiece because Bernardine Evaristo never reduces her characters to mere "flab bearers" for one issue or another. They are above all individual beings shaped both by exterior circumstances independent from their will and by the choices they make. Each of them is complex and nuanced (and for some of them deeply flawed) just as the reality of human experience is much more complex and nuanced than simplistic discourses full of stereotypes would have us believed.

And this quote says it better than I do : "Megan was part Ethioian, 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".

Every time Penelope says sapphics like it’s a slur is weirdly funny to me 😆

I found this post very interesting and informative. Thank you for sharing your special thoughts with us. I definitely share this with my peeps.

I particularly liked this one: “ African peoples were referred to as black long after the word made its appearance in the English language, so it makes no sense to retroactively impose racist connotations on to its everyday usage, and if you do, you’re going to drive yourself mad and, I’m sorry to say, everyone else with you”, because [and don’t hate on me] nowadays we live in a world where we’re always and everywhere afraid of what we say may mean to someone. Sometimes we’re just speaking. Sometimes we don’t mean bad things. And some times it’s not insensitivity, it’s just natural. It’s language as it says.