Girl, Woman, Other

by

Bernardine Evaristo

Themes and Colors
Diaspora, Culture, and Identity Theme Icon
Love, Sexuality, and Race  Theme Icon
Home and Community  Theme Icon
Contradiction, Complexity, and Intersectionality  Theme Icon
Radical vs. Reformist Social Movements  Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Girl, Woman, Other, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Home and Community  Theme Icon

The women who make up the cast of Girl, Woman, Other are all, in their own ways, in search of home and community. Each of the characters struggles to carve out a place for themselves within an often hostile and exclusionary English society. The first-generation immigrants—like Bummi, Winsome, and Amma’s father Kwabena—mourn the loss of the home they’ve been forced to leave behind while they struggle to survive in a new place that will never feel fully like home. The second-generation immigrant characters born in England are disconnected from their parents’ homelands, but their racial and ethnic identities cause their communities in their native England to treat them as outsiders, as well. Tired of dealing with the overt and covert racism embedded in the mainstream theater world, Amma and Dominique create a refuge for themselves and other women of color when they found The Bush Woman Theatre Company for women of color in the arts. Carole spends her childhood desperate to escape her low-income community where cycles of violence, addiction, and broken families make upward mobility a rare opportunity. She’s forced to leave behind her mother and her friends like LaTisha to make a new home within white, middle-class English society. Hattie’s sense of home is deeply rooted in the land that her family has stewarded for two centuries, but that legacy contains secrets that will complicate her firm sense of home.

Finally, the third generation represents new possibilities. They are most at home in England, but they still face similar struggles, especially as renewed right-wing movements threaten the progress their parents’ generation made. Yazz finds solace in two other brown girls on the mostly white Oxford campus, and Morgan finds a home in the trans community. On a meta level, the characters look for community in stories. Amma’s play—like the book itself—is a story that brings these disparate women together. Even though a single play can’t fully represent or speak for all the women, they sit together in the audience as witnesses to Amma’s groundbreaking moment that shatters barriers enforced by a white-supremacist society. Ultimately, the story ends with a literal homecoming between Hattie and her long-lost daughter Penelope that reinforces Evaristo’s overall message that though home and community are tenuous and ever-changing, affected by loss and sacrifice, people can also find and (re)construct home and community in unexpected places. 

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Home and Community ThemeTracker

The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Home and Community appears in each chapter of Girl, Woman, Other. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Home and Community Quotes in Girl, Woman, Other

Below you will find the important quotes in Girl, Woman, Other related to the theme of Home and Community .
Chapter 2: Carole Quotes

Carole amended herself to become not quite them, just a little more like them

she scraped off the concrete foundation plastered on to her face, removed the giraffe-esque eyelashes that weighed down her eyelids, ripped off the glued-on talons that made most daily activities difficult

such as getting dressed, picking things up, most food preparation and using toilet paper

she ditched the weaves sewn into her scalp for months at a time, many months longer than advised because, having saved up to wear the expensive black tresses of women from India or Brazil, she wanted her money’s worth, even when her scalp festered underneath the stinky patch of cloth from which her fake hair flowed

she felt freed when it was unstitched for the very last time, and her scalp made contact with air.

She felt the deliciousness of warm water running directly over it again without the intermediary of a man-made fabric

She then had her tight curls straightened, Marcus said he preferred her hair natural, she told him she’d never get a job if she did that

Related Characters: Carole Williams (speaker)
Page Number: 137
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2: Bummi Quotes

my point is that you are a Nigerian

no matter how high and mighty you think you are

no matter how English-English your future husband

no matter how English-English you pretend yourself to be

what is more, if you address me as Mother ever again I will beat you until you are dripping wet with blood and then I will hang you upside down over the balcony with the washing to dry

I be your mama

now and forever

never forget that, abi?

Related Characters: Bummi Williams (speaker), Carole Williams
Page Number: 158
Explanation and Analysis:

Bummi and Augustine agreed they were wrong to believe that in England, at least, working hard and dreaming big was one step away from achieving it

Augustine joked he was acquiring a second doctorate in shortcuts, bottlenecks, one-way streets and dead ends

while transporting passengers who thought themselves far too superior to talk to him as an equal

Bummi complained that people viewed her through what she did (a cleaner) and not what she was (an educated woman)

they did not know that curled up inside her was a parchment certificate proclaiming her a graduate of the Department of Mathematics, University of Ibadan

just as she did not know that when she strode on to the graduation podium in front of hundreds of people to receive her ribboned scroll, and shake hands with the Chancellor of the University, that her first class degree from a Third World country would mean nothing in her new country

especially with her name and nationality attached to it

Related Characters: Bummi Williams (speaker), Carole Williams, Augustine Williams
Page Number: 167
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2: LaTisha Quotes

Losing her dad the way she did was something LaTisha never talked about; whenever people asked, she told them he’d died of a heart attack

it was easier than explaining what had happened, people thinking there must be something wrong with her and her family

else why would he leave?

she ran wild, hated school, couldn’t concentrate, even Mummy couldn’t control her and she was a social worker, I’m sending you home to Jamaica where they’ll beat some sense into you, LaTisha

yeh, whatevs, I could do with a Caribbean holiday

Related Characters: LaTisha Jones (speaker), Bummi Williams, Shirley King, Glenmore Jones, Pauline Jones, Sister Omofe
Page Number: 199-200
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3: Shirley Quotes

Shirley

was praised by the headmaster, Mr. Waverly, as a natural teacher, with an easy rapport with the children, who goes above and beyond the call of duty, achieves excellent exam results with her exemplary teaching skill and who is a credit to her people

in her first annual job assessment

Shirley felt the pressure was now on to be a great teacher and an ambassador

for every black person in the world

Related Characters: Shirley King (speaker)
Page Number: 222
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4: Hattie  Quotes

after Joseph died, Slim broke open an old library cabinet when he couldn’t find the keys, said that as the man of the house he needed to know what was in it

he found old ledgers that recorded the captain’s lucrative business as a slave runner, exchanging slaves from Africa for sugar in the West Indies

came charging like a lunatic into the kitchen where she was cooking and had a go at her for keeping such a wicked family secret from him

she didn’t know, she told him, was as upset as he was, the cabinet had been locked her entire life, her father told her important documents were inside and never go near it

she calmed Slim down, they talked it through

it’s not me or my Pa who’s personally responsible, Slim, she said, trying to mollify her husband, no you co-own the spoils with me

she wrapped her long arms around his waist from behind

it’s come full circle, hasn’t it?

Related Characters: Hattie “GG” Jackson (speaker), Slim Jackson (speaker), Megan/Morgan Malinga , Joseph Rydendale , Captain Linnaeus Rydendale
Related Symbols: The Greenfields Farmhouse
Page Number: 368
Explanation and Analysis:
Epilogue Quotes

this metal-haired wild creature from the bush with the piercingly feral eyes

is her mother

this is she

this is her

who cares about her colour? why on earth did Penelope ever think it mattered?

in this moment she’s feeling something so pure and primal it’s overwhelming

they are mother and daughter and their whole sense of themselves is recalibrating

her mother is now close enough to touch

Penelope had worried she would feel nothing, or that her mother would show no love for her, no feelings, no affection

how wrong she was, both of them are welling up and it’s like the years are swiftly regressing until the lifetimes between them no longer exist

this is not about feeling something or about speaking words

this is about being

together

Related Characters: Penelope Halifax/Barbara (speaker), Hattie “GG” Jackson
Page Number: 452
Explanation and Analysis: