Time & Perspective Quote by Leymah Gbowee

The line lands like a rebuke to a global audience that has grown comfortable consuming African women through a single, marketable frame: suffering. Gbowee isn’t asking for “better representation” in the abstract; she’s calling out an economy of attention where pity travels faster than respect. “Put away the image” is pointedly physical language, like clearing a cluttered room. It suggests the victim narrative isn’t just wrong, it’s been kept on a shelf and pulled out whenever the world needs a familiar story about Africa.

Her pivot from “victims” to “everyday heroes” matters because it refuses the trap of exceptionalism. She’s not elevating a handful of saints; she’s insisting that endurance, organizing, caretaking, and risk-taking are routine forms of courage. The phrase “everyday heroes” also quietly rewrites what counts as political action. In Gbowee’s own Liberian context - where women’s collective pressure helped force peace talks and end a brutal civil war - the “everyday” was the strategy. Market women, mothers, churchgoers: the people most often relegated to background scenery became the engine of change.

The subtext is a warning about what victimhood narratives do: they flatten agency, invite saviorism, and make outsiders feel morally alive while leaving power arrangements untouched. Gbowee’s demand isn’t simply to admire African women; it’s to see them clearly enough to take them seriously as actors with plans, leverage, and leadership. That shift is political. It changes who gets listened to, funded, protected, and credited when history gets written.