# Tell freedom

Tell Freedom is a novel, published in the year 1954, by Peter Abrahams, a South African-born novelist, journalist and political commentator who in 1956 settled in Jamaica, where he lived for the rest of his life. The novel tells of the Author's childhood and youth life in the slums of Johannesburg and the country around it.

## Quotes

* I pushed my nose and lip...I was inside the raindrop away from the misery ofthe cold damp room. I was in a place of warmth and sunshine, inside myraindrop world.
** Page 7
* I remember the many people who suddenly invaded the house, making me feelstranger in my own home...With his (father’s) going, the order and stabilitythat had been in my life dissolved. There was no breadwinner. So we had toleave the place that had been our home.
** Page 10
* Twenty- SecondStreet, the street where we lived, was strange and alien. The noise was frightening after thequiet of Elsburg
** Page 62
* ..it seemed to me there was nosense in life. Things happened and no one seemed to know why.
** Page 79
* You are Colored. There are three kinds of people: white people, Coloredpeople, and black people. The white people come first, then the Coloredpeople, then the black people. Lee asks “Why?” but Aunt’s answer is,“Because it is so.
** Page 44
* ressed in anorange sack. Three holes in the sack allowed for his head and arms to come through. Abouthis waist was a piece of rope that gathered the sack in and made it hang like some monkishgarb. He was barefooted
** Page 89
* entering is stepping into a new Dark Age. The sea had once been here. Inits retreat it had left a white, unyielding sand, grown dirty with time. It had left almost a desert.
** Page 341
* He (Roderiques) was hungry and homeless. So I fed him. He told mesomething had gone wrong and he had to leave the Roman school. He said he had no people.
** Page 345 -346
* . . . Dear God! Has earth a fairer land? Can there be one as fair? And if therecan, can I feel for it as for this? And can my heart ever ache for the people ofanother with the purity it does for the people of this? The whites here sing alove song to the land, from within. Would they haveme sing it from without?...a little self-conscious and ashamed at the intensity of my emotions. Newfeelings, elusive and uncontrollable, played on my heart and mind. A needdifferent from all the other needs I had ever knownmoved me to longing. AndI did not know what I longed for.
** Page 240
* Light iswhite: dark is black.
** Page 239
* Really these streets and trees, almost the clean air I breathed here were:RESERVED FOR EUROPEANS ONLY. I was the intruder. And like theintruder, I walked carefully lest I be discovered. I longed for what the whitefolk had. I envied them their superior European lot
** Page 193
* I turned and looked at the city. A sea of twinkling, multi-colored lights leapedto the eye. They threw up the outlines of buildings. They made the wide streetsshine. They spelled out advertisements. I could map the city by its lights.
** Page 239
* That was the heart of it there, where it was almost as light as day. I could seecars and trams clearly. And the outlines of people moving. White people. Tothe left, and a little towards me, was Malay Camp, an inky black spot in thesea of light. Couldn't see anything there. Dark folkmove in darkness: whitefolk move in light. Well, Malay Camp wouldn’t be a slum if it were as light asthe city. Slum is darkness. Dark folk live in darkness.
** Page 239
* you write in English and already you are touching thingsthat should not be mentioned
** Page 273
* Who had given him the scholarship? The Bantu Welfare Trust? No one Iasked seemed sure. I put out feelers. The Welfare Trust was only for pure-blooded Africans. And though the Africans might accept me as one ofthemselves, the whites who administered the trust would not. Those to whom Ispoke thought it crazy, but there you are.
** Page 274
* the concerts andtheatres, the libraries and the parks, the bookshops and the clean, fresh looking tearooms, thebuses and departmental stores
** Page 275
* In the name of civilization, the dignity and worth of the African people hasbeen grossly underrated, their progress retarded and aspirations frustrated, andthe whole life undermined. They are compelled to live in appalling conditionsof squalor, filth and isolation...
** Page 254
* In that time I had beenaccused of theft, I had been called all the pet names of abuse reserved by whites for blacks; Ihad carried heavy loads to the tram stop, and women had conveniently forgotten to pay
** Page 202
* All the years of his life had been spent walking through the land;from east to west, then back; from north to south, then back
** Page 80
* Oh––isn’t it lovely? That’s the one Iwant when we are rich!’ Her eyes were bright, her lips parted
** Page 248
* it was difficult for the Africans most of whom had taken Europeaneducation and embraced Christian religion, to revert to the rapidly dying, outdated traditionsand customs of their forefathers
** Page 170
* On a different mental and emotional level my friend Jonathan had gonethrough the same process. Christianity and the knowledge it brought had madethe tribal past inadequate. So he had turned to the Christian present and future.These working men had found the tribal economy inadequate when the newtaxes, the new offerings, and new prices of the white men came. So they hadturned to city...
** Page 308
* found that thegood things of this present are RESERVED FOR EUROPEANS ONLY
** Page 309