Simi Bedford

Simi Bedford is a Nigerian novelist based in Britain.

Quotes

• I went to school in England and I was taught about slavery, but I was taught about it from a very European point of view - that this was a horrible episode, but actually, Europeans then realised that it was a terrible thing they were doing and so very kindly, as a gift, gave freedom to the slaves.
  • Simi spoke about slavery BBC News
• How we danced. The music poured through our veins and we flowed with the beat. The wheel had come full circle. We wound and unwound our bodies seamlessly as if we had no bones. Is there a sight more beautiful, the older women said, than a Yoruba girl dancing?
  • Yoruba Girl Dancing (1991), last lines LibQuotes

Quotes about Bedford

• Through Yoruba Girl Dancing, Simi Bedford ingeniously, entertainingly, eloquently, and intelligently examines the complicated issues of home and identity, language and diaspora, in multiple contexts.
  • Dianne Johnson as quoted in Who belongs to whom?: Assimilation and deracination in Simi Bedford's Yoruba Girl Dancing, ProQuest, 1999.
• You can read a lot of books and the main characters are white people - especially in the classics - and after a while you forget that you're not white, almost, because it's this big pervasive culture. And then you find books like Yoruba Girl Dancing [by Simi Bedford] and you think: it's just as interesting to be Nigerian in England as it is to be white in England.
  • Helen Oyeyemi as quoted in 'I didn't know I was writing a novel', The Guardian, 10 January 2005.
• In my pre-teen years, I read books such as Yoruba Girl Dancing by Simi Bedford, Beka Lamb by Zee Edgell and books by Rosa Guy. I also read a lot of Enid Blyton and Betsy Byars.
  • Yewande Omotoso as quoted in ‘I Tend to Write Wildly and Freely', The Republic, 16 June 2023.