Miriam Tlali

Miriam Tlali (11 November 1933 – 24 February 2017) was a South African novelist. She was the first black woman in South Africa to publish an English-language novel, Muriel at Metropolitan.

Quotes

Muriel at Metropolitan (1975)

• Botswana. It is not called Bechuanaland any more now.
  • Muriel's reply to the white employee at the Metropolitan Radio

• I can't stand those voices! Those baboons there, sitting there talking.
  • pg. 68

• It was no use trying to speak to him. The long painful years of contact with the whites had developed within him a hard protective core of indifference to all their constant abusive reprimands. He was dead inside, I thought.
  • pg. 106

• Don't call me Nanny, your Nanny is looking after your kids at your house.
  • pg. 133

• For him as well as Aggripa, this is home. Adam will only leave here when he's a corpse. Where can he go to? He is a "foreign native", a Rhodesian. He has to remain tied to Mr Block for the rest of his life like a slave; he has been sold to him and may not leave him for another master. At least I'm free.
  • pg. 146

• And I thought to myself, to think that my poor little niece is not even aware that she is so important. That her innocent request to pay me a visit can be regarded as a threat to the security of the great Republic of South Africa.
  • pg. 165

• These damnable laws which dictate to you where, and next to whom, you shall walk, sit, stand and lie... This whole abominable nauseating business of toilets and "separate but equal facilities"... What is one to do anyway? One is forever in a trap from which there is no escape... except suicide...
  • Muriel's reaction to the attitude of the Whites towards her

• My handwriting had never looked so beautiful. I had at last decided to free myself of the shackles which had bound not only my hands, but also my soul.
  • pg. 190

External links

• Muriel at Metropolitan