Peter Abrahams
Peter Abrahams
Peter Henry Abrahams Deras, commonly known as Peter Abrahams, is a South African novelist, journalist and political commentator...
NationalitySouth African
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth3 March 1919
accepted access anywhere born conferred empire entitled finding social south speaking special trade union white
Being born white in South Africa or anywhere in the empire and Commonwealth automatically conferred this special status. You had no problem finding a place to live, a job, trade union membership, access to social services. Being white, speaking English, you were accepted as English, entitled to all the rights of citizenship.
became books colour lived marked men shelf women writings
I read every one of the books on the shelf marked American Negro Literature. I became a nationalist, a colour nationalist, through the writings of men and women who lived a world away from me.
answers automatic darker ideologies lighter problem races relations
Marxism, communism, socialism - the ideologies - did not have the automatic answers to the problem of the relations between the lighter and darker races of mankind. They did not even have an answer to anti-Semitism.
came lived lower near neither nor spoke women worked
Most of the black women who lived in the lower end of Vrededorp came from the countryside and were there to be near their menfolk who worked in the mines. They spoke neither English nor Afrikaans.
among either found gracious heroes men places respect simple tolerance
The only places where I have found that simple human dignity, that respect for the other man, and the gracious feel of tolerance and humanity have not been either among the heroes of the class-struggle or the 'thinking men' but among my simple 'backward' people.
aware difference numbers
There is a qualitative difference between being a minority and being a majority. Majorities are stronger under psychological pressure because numbers count. But only if they are aware of it.
destroy hard middle passed twentieth
To have the ability to destroy all and not to do it was one of the hard tests humanity passed - but only just - in the middle of the twentieth century.
eye brain different
They say life is all about connecting, like that's a good thing. But when brain and eyes are lining up you know different.
good-person badness shows
You don't have to be a good person to be a good writer--history shows it's better if you're not--but you have to understand your badness.
nice real giving
To get from people you had to give a piece of yourself, a real piece that mattered. Just being nice was not enough.
dream book self
With Shakespeare and poetry, a new world was born. New dreams, new desires, a self consciousness was born. I desired to know to know myself in terms of the new standards set by these books.
dream lost-friendship magic
Many have changed so much that they have lost the magic of the dream that carried them on their own bootstraps.
want
To get where you want to go, you can't only do what you like.
among individual man number tribal western
Tribal man is not an individual in the western sense. Psychologically and emotionally, he is the present living personification of a number of forces, among the most important of which are the ancestral dead.