elstaffe’s Reviews > The Fiddler on Pantico Run: An African Warrior, His White Descendants, A Search for Family > Status Update

"'It is believed that ancestors live in the ground and can see you.'
'How does this fit with your Catholicism?' I asked.
'I hardly ever pray to the Western God,' he said. 'Catholic doesn't mean you believe in anything.'" (251)

"'It's only the mother who knows where the child really comes from.' So simple, and yet so cynical. The father could only be sure of his blood relation to his sister's children." (237)

"'Your heirs are not your children here,' he said. 'Your sister's child is the only clear person to succeed you. This was not a matriarchal society, where women ruled the family and tribe. ... Walter, who came from the Kom, a matrilineal society, described the motive of inheritance going down a female line:" (237)

"Near the top of the road the taxi climbed a steep hill into a pleasant neighborhood of big palm trees and tin-roofed colonial buildings, many set on stilts to ride out lava flows." (225) like houses by the water but the floor is lava

"The earliest known mention of the king's native name came in a reference written by Damiao de Gois in 1545 to the king's son, Mobemba amosinga, which in the manner of Kongo names meant Mobemba, son of Amosinga. John Thornton ... was convinced the American Mozingo was an earlier variation of this royal Kongo name, preserved by coming to Virginia and getting rooted in English record keeping." (213)

"This was the domain of what were once mainstream ideas, now a bunch of weirdoes too scared to use their real names, practically masturbating to their own 'whiteness,' and plotting the takeover of America like children planning a trip to Mars. And even they, the white nationalists, can't seem to agree on what a white person is." (198) book published 2012

"Thunder growled lowly, a dog having a bad dream." (185)

"Even my pod-mate at work, a black woman, very intellectual and versed in racial history, thought my having an African name was too far-fetched." (159) very intellectual

"'But how do you know it's an African name just because it exists there? Couldn't the Portuguese have brought it there?'
'But the name doesn't exist in Portugal.'
'I'm just pretending this is all on the witness stand,' he said.
'Okay,' I said, though I didn't remember our Basque theory ever taking the witness stand." (157) yep

"For a while she was living in the home of a Jewish biochemist whose sister she was a nanny for. One night, her host beckoned her to come downstairs during a party and announced to her guests that Ruth was actually black. One woman studied her and then marveled, 'I can't believe it. I didn't know you looked like that.'" (126)