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Phillippa Yaa de Villiers
7 quotes
“I became Phillippa Yaa when I found my biological father, who told me that if he had been there when I was born, the first name I'd have been given would be a day name like all Ghanaian babies, and all Thursday girls are Yaa, Yawo, or Yaya. So by changing my name I intended to inscribe a feeling of belonging and also one of pride on my African side.”
Phillippa Yaa de Villiers (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“After growing up black in white South Africa, internalising so many negative 'truths' of what black people are like, I needed to reclaim my humanity and myself from the toxic dance of objectification.”
Phillippa Yaa de Villiers (born 1966) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Thoughts behind Indegenius: concept for the 29th", Pulse, 8 November 2014. Retrieved 4 April 2025.
“Because I wasn't told that I was adopted until I was twenty, I lacked a vocabulary to describe who I am and where I come from, so performing and writing became ways to make myself up.”
Phillippa Yaa de Villiers (born 1966) first seen 2025 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: MarLa Sink Druzgal, "Around the World with the Poetry of Phillippa Yaa de Villiers", Traveling Marla. Retrieved 4 April 2025.
“I started writing poetry when I was a child, my first published poem was when I was 11. I was brought up in a home that loved poetry and literature, especially the English language. But it was only when I was older that I realised that writing is so much more than words playing on a page.”
Phillippa Yaa de Villiers (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Writing contains the writer, their concerns, their social context and their history. My own history became a block to my creativity as I started to explore my identity as a black woman adopted by a white family in apartheid South Africa.”
Phillippa Yaa de Villiers (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I felt like the colonised and the coloniser were fighting each other inside my brain. Writing continued to be important to me but I was convinced that it was simply a therapeutic process, of no value to anyone else.”
Phillippa Yaa de Villiers (born 1966) first seen 2025 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Woman in Science | "Center for the Advanced Study of Human Paleobiology | the George Washington University". Retrieved 4 April 2025.
“As a mixed-race African and adoptee I feel, paradoxically, oppressed and completely free....My adult life has been largely devoted to healing this rift. The freedom of my paradoxical position, is in fact that I don't have the constraints of a traditional role and I have access to the world.”
Phillippa Yaa de Villiers (born 1966) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Crossing Borders", Issue 3, 2006. Retrieved 4 April 2025.