But who made the law that we should not hope in our daughters? We, women, subscribe to that law more than anyone. Until we change all this, it is sti… - Buchi Emecheta

She, who only a few months previously would have accepted nothing but the best, had by now been conditioned to expect inferior things. She was now learning to suspect anything beautiful and pure. Those things were for the whites, not the blacks.

Adah could not stop thinking about her discovery that the whites were just as fallible as everyone else. There were bad whites and good whites, just as there were bad blacks and good blacks! Why then did they claim to be superior?

God, when will you create a woman who will be fulfilled in herself, a full human being, not anybody’s appendage? she prayed desperately.