I was born in Australia and when I was six months old, my parents, who were missionaries, went to what was then southern Rhodesia. It is now called Zimbabwe. And I grew up as a while child at first totally among black children. I spoke English with a very broad African accent.
I went barefoot, rode wild donkeys, went off for — you know, all day long with my parents having no idea where I was, but knowing that I was safe, and it was idyllic. I was I grew up in a very book-loving household. My parents had all of Dickens, Shakespeare, all the great poets, Madame Bovary, really you know, Crime and Punishment.
The major books of the world were
I lived in a library really and people think, oh, she grew up on a mission in Africa. Oh, that must have been so hard. That must have been, you know, so deprived. In fact, it was a fabulous, fabulous childhood both educationally, my family, interracially.
I knew that I knew that color had no that color was literally skin deep. I knew that it didn’t make a person a better friend because they were black. It didn’t make them a worse friend because they were black. I knew that some people were horrible and some people were funny and some people were kind. But it didn’t matter what color they were.
