Wild Seed

In my years, I have seen that people must be their own gods and make their own good fortune. The bad will come or not come anyway.

Civilization is the way one's own people live. Savagery is the way foreigners live.

He could not tell her that he was angry because she did not love him. Even he could not utter such foolishness. Certainly, he did not love her. He did not love anyone except perhaps Isaac and a very few of his other children. Yet he wanted Anyanwu to be like his many other women and treat him like a god in human form, competing for his attention no matter how repugnant his latest body nor even whether he might be looking for a new body. They knew he took women almost as readily as he took men. Especially, he took women who had already given him what he wanted of them--usually several children. They served him and never thought they might be his next victims. Someone else. Not them.

She learned quickly that it was not good to be too different. Great differences caused envy, suspicion, fear, charges of witchcraft.

You are a good man,” she had observed contentedly. “And it has been too long since I had this.” He was surprised

Could she give Doro what he wanted—what she herself had wanted for so long—children who would not die?

Thus, when her enemies came to kill her, she knew more about surviving than they did about killing. And

to be aware of a place where blackness was not a mark of slavery.