Peter Abrahams

Peter Henry Abrahams Deras (3 March 1919 – 18 January 2017), commonly known as Peter Abrahams, was a South African-born novelist, journalist and political commentator who in 1956 settled in Jamaica, where he lived for the rest of his life.

Mine Boy (1946)



 * A strange group of people, these, he thought. Nothing tied them down. They seem to believe in nothing. But well, they had given him a bed. She had given it to him. She who was the strangest of them all.
 * Narrator, p.6


 * An unbelievable thing happened. The second colored man knocked the first one down and ran down the street waving to Xuma.
 * Narrator, p.16


 * Leah left him and he collapsed in a heap. She looked down and spat. The she raised her heel and brought it down on his face.
 * Narrator, p.29


 * I am no good and I cannot help myself. It will be right if you hate me. You should beat me. But inside me there is something wrong. And it is because I want the things of the white people. I want to be like the white people and go where they go and do the things they do and I am black. I cannot help it.
 * Eliza p.60


 * Out of your feeling and out of your pain it must come. Others have found it. You can too. But first you must think and not be afraid of your thoughts. And if you have questions and you look around you will find those who will answer them. But first you must know what you are going to fight and why and what you want.
 * Paddy, page 171.


 * Hoopvlei was another of the white man's ventures to get the natives and coloreds out of the towns. The natives did not like the locations, and besides, they were all full, so the white man had started townships in the outlying district of Johannesburg in the hope of killing Vrededorp and Malay Camp. Many other places had been killed thus.
 * Narrator, page 95.


 * No! I don't want you to touch me.
 * Eliza, page 89.


 * He did not want to go there for fear he should meet Eliza. And she was like a devil in his blood. He could not forget her.
 * Narrator, page 61.


 * He sat on the bed and held his head in his hands. Eliza had gone out with that sickly monkey dressed in the clothes of a white man. Why, even his hands were soft.
 * Narrator, page 57.


 * Johannes drunk and Johannes sober were two different people.
 * Narrator, page 32.


 * The only place where he was completely free was underground in the mines. There he was a master and knew his way. There he did not even fear his white man, for his white man depended on him. He was the boss boy. He gave the orders to the other mine boys. They would do for him what they would not do for his white man or any other white man.
 * Page 61


 * His white man had even tried to make friends with him because the other mine boys respected him so much. But a white man and a black man cannot be friends. They work together. That's all.
 * Page 61.

**Page 67
 * He's just a mine boy ... Yes. Grand, but not a human being yet. Just a mine boy.


 * A man's a man to the extent that he asserts himself. There's no assertion in your mine boy. There is confusion and bewilderment and acceptance. Nothing more.
 * Page 68.


 * So many people who consider themselves progressives have their own weird notions about the native, but they all have one thing in common. They want to decide who the good native is and they want to do good things for him. [...] They want to think for him and he must accept their thoughts. And they like him to depend on them.
 * Page 68.


 * It is not enough to destroy, you must build as well. Build up a stock of faith in your breast in native Zuma, mine boy, who has no social conscience, who cannot read or write and cannot understand his wanting what you want. **Page 69.


 * The natives did not like locations, and besides, they were all full, so the white man had started townships in the outlying district of Johannesburg in the hope of killing Vrededorp and Malay Camp.
 * Page 95*


 * If a man loves a woman he loves her. That is all. There is no bad and there is no good. There is only love. The only thing that is bad is if a man loves a woman and she loves him not.
 * Page 119.


 * A woman finds a man and the whole world is a new place. And the fighting stiffness that was ever in her body, goes. And the hardness of her head stops and she does not think any more with her head but feels with her heart. Yes, it is ever so. And with a man it is so too. His shoulders square and a smile is not far from his lips and there is a new certainty in him. Yes. It has ever been so and it will ever be so when a man and a woman love. **Page 123


 * If a woman loves a man she does that which is good for him.
 * Page 124.


 * I am no good and I cannot help myself. It will be right if you hate me. You should beat me. But inside me there is something wrong. And it is because I want the things of the white people. I want to be like the white people and go where they go and do the things they do and I am black. I cannot help it. Inside I am not black and I do not want to be a black person.
 * Page 60.

A Wreath for Udomo (1956)

 * She's vain about her hair.
 * Chapter 2, Pg 11


 * It's because I creep up on people, I creep up on them while their backs are turned. Then suddenly without knowing how they realise, I'm there and they want what's there. Only they can't have it.
 * Chapter 2, Pg 24