Cape Verdean Quotes

You kiss the back of my legs and I want to cry. Only the sun has come this close, only the sun.

You’d rather be here than in Africa. The trump card all narrow-minded nativists play. If you put a cupcake to my head, of course, I’d rather be here than any place in Africa, though I hear Johannesburg ain’t that bad and the surf on the Cape Verdean beaches is incredible. However, I’m not so selfish as to believe that my relative happiness, including, but not limited to, twenty-four-hour access to chili burgers, Blu-ray, and Aeron office chairs is worth generations of suffering. I seriously doubt that some slave ship ancestor, in those idle moments between being raped and beaten, was standing knee-deep in their own feces rationalizing that, in the end, the generations of murder, unbearable pain and suffering, mental anguish, and rampant disease will all be worth it because someday my great-great-great-great-grandson will have Wi-Fi, no matter how slow and intermittent the signal is.

A lot of the time, when people hear the word empowerment – women’s empowerment, especially – they only think about being a strong feminist, but it’s not just about that, It’s about highlighting what you already have. Highlighting your culture. And in this sense, I would say that the typical Cape Verdean [woman] is resilient and very proud of her work.